Ms Jodie McGriele:

There are two workplace integration partner officers, or WIPOs, as they like to call themselves. Their roles were set up as part of the funding we received from the Dormant Accounts Fund. The idea was for us to take a two-pronged approach – make companies disability confident and work with service users on pre-employment supports, for example, mock interviews with real employers, CV skills and all the other bits and pieces people need. In speaking to employers, we tell them that if people are not looking them in the eye, it is because they are using eccentric viewing.

We have a WIPO embedded in Dublin and another embedded in Cork. They have been successful in, for example, following up. They might secure an employer that is vision impaired-confident. It might be a large employer like a pharmaceutical company or a global company like Meta or Amazon. The WIPO places someone in an internship and then engages in some lunch-and-learn exercises so that people understand vision impairment. They might use VR headsets to simulate that. We have found this approach works well in terms of people's longevity in companies, levels of understanding and having confidence that companies will re-employ someone. The entire organisation is then engaged. It is not just one good experience in one department. We ensure it is cross-departmental and nationwide. Given the success of the two WIPOs, we have now funded them under the NCBI. They have been very successful.