EPA-0552 – Social Rehabilitation and Employment of People with Intellectual Disabilities

Abstract

Background:

Experience in the field of professional and social activation and employment of people with moderate and severe intellectual disabilities indicates the need to seek specific strategies for solving problems on the way into the labor market of people recruited from this social group.

The analysis of the limitations and difficulties in recruiting these people, and based on samples taken before employing them on the open market, gave birth to the concept of developing an innovative system to support candidates for employment.

Methods:

The development of the Project’Our work - preventing discrimination against disabled people in access to work, preceded by a very detailed analysis of the situation, required a creation of a timetable for action, specification of the project management, definition of technical facilities and personnel involved in the project, defining the target group, identification of needs, preferences and predispositions diagnosis of the candidates, development of workshop programs tailored to the level of functioning and the perception of participants, and the demarcation of the general and specific objectives of the Project.

Results:

The proposal of the concept represented a change from current thinking about the employment of disabled persons through’matching them to work’ and a new environment (which often ends as a trauma and feeling of having failed) to the’matching jobs to particular people.’

Conclusion:

This is an innovative career path for investigation by the employment of people with intellectual disabilities, defined as those with particular difficulties entering and staying in the labor market.