Disability bias can start early

Disabled people's attempts at gaining employment are often frustrated by the lack of support services for work experience, casual jobs and voluntary work. These are the findings of a recent report by disability organisation RADAR.

The report, Mind the gap - disability, opportunity and employment, finds that exclusion from work experience can start early. This is because many disabled people miss out on school-based work experience due to lack of appropriate funding to support their additional needs. As RADAR points out: "This has an adverse effect on confidence and aspiration and often leads to early isolation."

Mind the gap finds that on vocational courses which require students to undertake work placements, funding for the students' additional needs is frequently limited to college-based learning, and is not adequate for work placements.

Meanwhile, says the report, though casual and voluntary work can provide opportunities to learn work-based skills, government schemes such as Access to Work, which pay for additional equipment or support, can take up to 10 weeks to put in place. This rules out many casual jobs for disabled people with support needs.

Nick Goss, RADAR's education, employment and training officer and the report's author, said: "If the government is serious in its aim to get disabled people into work then the current mish-mash of agencies, criteria and assessments needs to be replaced by seamless, coherent provision. This must meet the needs of disabled people at every stage of the transition from education to employment."