Look beyond disability, says government

The government has launched a campaign aimed at getting employers to challenge "negative and limiting assumptions about the capabilities of disabled workers".

Employ Ability, an initiative focusing on the benefits of employing disabled people, will be piloted in Leeds, Bradford, Manchester and Liverpool from September 2007, with a planned roll-out across Britain from early 2008.

Disabled people currently have an employment rate of 50%, compared to 74% for non-disabled people. The project will advise employers on best practice in recruiting and retaining disabled employees, as well as retaining current employees who become disabled. And it will seek to improve employers' access to practical information.

Announcing the scheme, work and pensions secretary John Hutton said: "We need to go further in getting employers themselves to do more to support recruitment and retention of disabled people."

Hutton was speaking at an event organised by think-tank the Social Market Foundation, which recently published a report arguing that improving disabled people's skills could benefit the economy by £35 billion over the next 30 years.

Produced in association with the Disability Rights Commission, Disability, skills and work - raising our ambitions adds that improving disabled people's employment rate to the UK average through skills improvements could be worth £13 billion.

The report can be downloaded from www.disabilityagenda.org/papers/disability,_skills_and_work.aspx