Ms Marian Hennessy:

My name is Marian Hennessy and I am the co-ordinator of Ability@Work in Cope Foundation in Cork city. I thank the committee for this opportunity to speak to the members today to highlight the barriers people with an intellectual disability and autism continue to face when seeking employment.

Cope Foundation is a Cork-based charity supporting 2,800 people who have intellectual disabilities and autism. Latest figures from the ESRI, published in 2021, show that over 71% of people with disabilities and of working age in Ireland are unemployed. We need to address this.

I am making this submission today on behalf of people we support in the Ability@Work programme. Ability@Work promotes inclusive employment and works closely with employers to provide sustainable supported employment opportunities. We link employers with people who are distant from the labour market. We receive our referrals from school-leavers and from adult day services where people have completed their second level education in specialist schools affiliated to Cope Foundation services. This programme was funded for three years through the national ability programme and now through interim funding from the Dormant Accounts Fund and Pobal until December 2022. We are one of 45 funded programmes around the country but, unfortunately, what we have at present is a sporadic and scattered service across the country with a particular lack of supports for people living in rural areas.

Ability@Work is a successful model of best practice creating inclusive workplaces. We have supported 100 people who were unemployed. Over the past three and a half years, we have placed 73 people in paid jobs and are upskilling a further 70 people in preparation for work. This model is easily adaptable and transferable across all marginalised groups.

Future funding for this programme will be key. It will be essential to give the people we support the security to know their service will be available for them in the long term. We need to be able to employ highly skilled job coaches and offer them job security. We also need to be able to offer a sustainable service to employers. We must budget for post-school training and work supports. We are over-reliant on funding that does not offer longevity or security to the people we support. For true inclusion to happen in the workplace, the disability sector needs long-term committed support and resources from Government to enable specialist services, such as ourselves, to support and maintain in jobs the people we know whose needs cannot be met by Intreo or the EmployAbility service.

We need to change the culture of low expectation for people with additional or more complex impairments. We can do this through early interventions in mainstream and specialist schools, incorporating career guidance, valuable work placements and engaging with local employers. We must work to change employer attitudes so that it becomes the norm to have a person with different ability in the workplace. This cultural shift needs to happen through campaigns with families, employers, HR professionals, trade unions and support networks. We must encourage employers to see the business case. We need to address disability awareness and encourage companies to be inclusive throughout all aspects of their businesses. Employers need to be fully informed of all the supports they can avail of and the services available to them. Post Covid-19, in our experience, very little has changed for the people we support. They are excluded from general recruitment practices due to lack of experience and qualifications. Often employers will only recruit for full-time roles and will not allow flexibility or accommodations. The online screening and application systems make it impossible for some of the people with intellectual disabilities to compete for a role. The design of job descriptions and essential requirements must be changed to ensure we are including everybody during the recruitment process.

As we plan to go forward over the next decade, innovations in technology will have a significant impact on people's ability to keep pace with all the technological advances. It may leave many people behind. However, these advancements in technology can also open up more opportunities and independence for people with higher support needs. They may also enable people with more severe impairments and mobility issues to transition to employment. For example, the Getting A Life programme in the UK, which finished in March 2021, was set up to enable people with severe intellectual disabilities achieve paid employment and have full lives when they leave education. In Ireland, many are leaving mainstream school or have finished training courses and are finding themselves at home with their parents and without supports. Often they do not know where to go or even the supports to which they are entitled. For many, there are no supports in their locality.

Projects like Ability@Work are good value for money, having more positive outcomes for people and their families. Sometimes getting a job is only one part of the solution. Being part of a workforce and being treated as an equal has much more significance.

It cannot be understated that the transition out of Covid-19 is a further barrier. Some people do not feel comfortable going out in large crowds. Some have lost their social skills and ability to return with confidence to the workplace. Some have lost their jobs.

As stated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, everybody has the right to employment and to earn freely a living of their choosing. I will hand over to my co-presenter today, Mr. Craig Kelly, who is a participant on the Ability@Work Programme, who will talk to the committee about his lived experience.