Scottish Government

Working for a change? The same as you?

What's the problem?

'I keep on being assessed for employment but never get a job.' (Interview: The same as you? p60)

Unemployment for all disabled people is two to three times the average level (Labour Force Survey, Winter 2001: 39% disabled people in work, compared with 81% of non-disabled).

The generally accepted UK figure of employment for people with a significant learning disability is far worse: approximately 5% are in employment. It is hard to be precise because no official baseline data on employment for people with a learning disability is collected. However, in Scotland a recent survey by Glasgow City Council showed that only 3.5% of 3,800 adults with a learning disability known to health and social services were in employment (Alcock, Common Knowledge). At the end of this report we recommend that research be commissioned by the Scottish Executive to fill this massive information gap.

There could be three obvious explanations for why people with a learning disability are not in employment:

• People don't want to work.

• There are no jobs.

• People with a learning disability are unemployable.

But none of these explanations holds water.

People do want to work

The best available evidence is that 65% of people with learning disabilities would like a paid job (Glenn & Lyons, 1996).

The standard measure of people with a significant learning disability is four adults per 1,000 of a general population, or 20,000 people across Scotland. This suggests that some 13,000 people in Scotland with learning disabilities want a job, while the evidence we have suggests that less than 1,000 people have one.

There are jobs

Economic forecasts for the UK show that the number of jobs is rising steadily. Nick Brown MP, recent Minister for Work, recently announced that the UK continued to enjoy economic stability, rising employment and more people moving into work.

'Economic stability is delivering rising employment - up by 242,000 over the year. This is a very good performance in the face of increased global economic uncertainty. Vacancies are high and our active labour market policies are ensuring that people take up these opportunities and move into work. There are more than 10,000 new vacancies in Jobcentres every working day and many more coming up all the time, across the country and in all types of occupations.' (Department for Work and Pensions Press Release,18 December 2002)

While some of these new jobs demand a very high level of scientific, technical or management skill, the majority are much more accessible jobs in the service, catering and retail sectors. Many high-tech employers such as universities, hospitals, banks and science parks use high numbers of ancillary staff to keep the place running.

There are 94,000 private sector employers in Scotland, 6,000 of which employ more than 50 people (Scottish Executive/ONS Corporate Statistics 2001). If every large employer worked with supported employment agencies to support only one person with learning disabilities, the unemployment problem for this group would be halved.

If the estimated 12,000 people in Scotland with learning disabilities who aspire to work were employed for 16 hours per week at 5.00 an hour, they would generate about 50m a year in earnings.

People are employable

The last 10-20 years has seen an explosion of supported employment agencies in the UK, successfully supporting people with learning disabilities to choose, get and keep a job. Scotland has several dozen of these agencies enabling hundreds of people throughout the country to work and hundreds of employers to employ people with learning disabilities. Thousands of people in Scotland work alongside people with learning disabilities each day. Although most agencies are based in the voluntary sector, the following example demonstrates how the agencies classically work.

There are a range of schemes in place to subsidise additional costs which may be incurred by employers, and increasingly local councils are actively changing service priorities - away from day centre cultures towards helping people with learning disabilities become included as part of everyday working life.

So people want to work; there are jobs; and there is now a wealth of experience in supporting people with a learning disability to get employed and stay employed. So why is only one person in 20 working?

Barriers to employment

The Employment short-life working group carried out new research for this report. Our findings were entirely consistent with those of previous studies and confirmed that the most significant problems in achieving supported employment for people with learning disabilities are well established.

The research of O'Bryan et al. (2000, 16-17) demonstrates how people with disabilities face both uncertainty and complexity when seeking to move from benefits to work. Our PiP co-ordinators' survey equally found that resolution of benefits confusion for people with learning disabilities was the one issue that would make the most difference to supported employment.

Of twenty PiP co-ordinators responding to our survey, nine felt that the Scottish Executive could do most to help with supported employment for people with learning disabilities by addressing the benefits trap , working with Westminster where necessary.

Five PiP co-ordinators thought that Jobcentre Plus should prioritise simplification of the benefits system to aid transitions into work.

Interestingly PiP co-ordinators do not perceive the level of benefit payments as a disincentive to employment (and elsewhere in the survey the consensus is that pay is also not perceived as an influential driving force). The 'trap' is that the benefits rules and culture do not make it easy for people with a learning disability to take up employment. This tallies with The same as you? recommendation 17: 'The Scottish Executive should consider raising, with the Department of Social Security, specific areas of concern related to benefits and support for people with learning disabilities.'

These areas of concern combine

a) to make it difficult for individuals and agencies to encourage people with a learning disability to take up employment;

b) to put off employers from employing people with complex needs; and

c) to create debilitating uncertainty for people and their families. This is what we mean by the benefits trap.

Supported employment workers on the North Lanarkshire Supported Employment scheme note that one of their keys to success when 'selling' supported employment to people and their families has been early assurance about assisting the person and their family through the benefits/wages transition. Only 2% of their clients of all ages have ever previously worked. However, families attending a focus group that we held in North Lanarkshire confirmed that, once people had started work, the other benefits of work (adult status, community connections and a sense of worth) were more important than financial gain.

'Getting a job makes me a real man.': focus group participant.

Low expectations by people with learning disabilities

11 of 20 responses to our PiP survey showed the aspiration of people with learning disabilities to work as being one of the three strongest driving forces for achieving employment.

Our focus groups confirmed that people with learning disabilities want to work, if only they are asked.

Weston's detailed research on people with complex needs in employment (2002, 93) also found that people had both positive and realistic expectations of what having a job would be like. Their motivations for wanting a job included a desire for choice, control and independence, avoiding boredom, meeting people, getting paid and having an opportunity to achieve and succeed. This reinforces both the findings of our North Lanarkshire families' focus group, and the ideas expressed in our other focus groups, as above.

When asked, many people with learning disabilities have a clear idea of what they want to do: but lots of people are never asked. The contrast with the experience of most young people who are relentlessly asked formally and informally 'what are you going to be when you grow up' couldn't be more poignant or telling. This is the polar opposite of being treated 'the same as you'. Many people with a learning disability do not get community care assessments or person-centred plans - and even when there is a formal opportunity like this, employment is often not discussed. Many children and young people with a learning disability miss out on proper work experience and other chances to learn about the world of work. As a result, they may not think of themselves as 'a person who works'. Normal aspirations are lost.

But even when people have clear aspirations, they may not know how and where to get help to convert these aspirations into a real job.

Low expectations by families

Our survey showed that seven of 20 PiP co-ordinators believe that low family expectations and over-protectiveness are strong barriers to achieving supported employment.

Families clearly play a key role in aspirations for everyone. We held a focus group for parents of children and young people who were not in work. We discussed the types of job they think their children would choose to do, if given the chance.

When specifically asked, family aspirations are not limited to 'special' jobs in 'special' places for their child. Aspirations include the normal range of career options including self-employment, geographical movement, normal jobs in normal places and so on. It is a different question to ask how society can best facilitate these choices. The point is that families cannot necessarily be assumed to be low in expectation or 'overprotective'. But families need to be asked the right questions in order to reveal these normal aspirations.

Reinforcing this finding, our focus group of people whose sons and daughters were already in paid employment with regular, high street employers were uniformly positive about the experience ( 'It's been like a miracle', 'It's a Godsend'). The interviews with them highlighted the benefits to both family and employee.

Parents' expectations are shaped by what they are told by professionals and others, sometimes from before their child is born. But their expectations can be revolutionised when they see the difference that work makes for their son or daughter, or even when they are asked questions which open up wider possibilities, beyond the stereotypical, old-fashioned expectations.

North Lanarkshire Supported Employment Scheme note that 70% of those whom they have supported into employment work in the private sector, demonstrating that supported employment brokers can open up new expectations and a wider understanding of options amongst people with learning disabilities, their families, service providers and employers alike.

Low expectations by service providers

By 'service providers' we mean group homes and supported living agencies, supported employment agencies, day services, community learning disability teams, care managers, schools and colleges.

The Riddell Advisory Committee was set up by the Scottish Executive to undertake a strategic review of the special educational provision for severe low incidence disabilities in Scotland (Scottish Executive, 1999). They concluded that:

'Young people with severe low incidence disabilities have considerable amounts of money spent on their education and yet post-school options are severely restricted and appear not to offer sufficient variety and opportunity for further development. This group has traditionally been regarded as incapable of participating in the labour market...'

Nine respondents to our PiP survey thought that a culture change by service providers towards making employment a real option would be among the three strongest driving forces for achieving quality supported employment.

Similarly, nine PiP co-ordinators thought that service providers should prioritise meaningful individual choice for people with learning disabilities, through person-centred planning, life plans, raising expectations or taking a 'long view of individuals' needs'. A typical response was ' Loosen up and become more responsive to individual need'.

Eight PiP co-ordinators thought that service providers should ensure that employment is a clear and real choice for people with learning disabilities. Typical responses were 'Integrate employment needs into assessment of needs - give it status', 'Earlier intervention to promote employment ethos and encourage to seek work'.

There are well-documented problems with getting professionals to 'think employment' for people with learning disabilities while at school, through Future Needs Assessment and through work placements. We asked about experiences in our parents' focus groups.

Another of our parents' focus groups felt that special schools careers officers 'don't help much' because they 'don't think inclusively'. The parents also felt that a wider range of employment experiences were needed at school because it was very hard for people with learning disabilities to experiment with a range of jobs after leaving school as most young people are able to do. This fundamental difference needed to be re-balanced by schools so that young people with learning disabilities were able to get good quality, diverse work experience before leaving school.

But, as Christine's experience above and Martin's experience below demonstrate, the problem of different treatment for people with learning disabilities continues post-school, when college courses designed for people with learning disabilities do not focus on their vocational interests. This can tie people up for years.

Many colleges fail to link 'special' courses specifically to employment. They become simply a way to spend time.

The work that supported employment agencies have been doing for years now in Scotland still struggles to work in harmony with the focus of social care professionals. The example below from Tayside Employment Disability Unit is typical of the individualised support undertaken by supported employment agencies in Scotland, and exemplifies the need for all to be pulling in the same direction.

But some local authorities have taken steps to re-provide services in such a way as to overcome the institutional biases which make it difficult for people with learning disabilities to get, find and keep work.

Crumpets café has provided an opportunity for adults with a learning disability to move from a day centre setting and gain experience of working in a commercial enterprise, then move into other types of employment that better meets their personal needs and aspirations if they wish. It has, from the beginning, been seen as a route to employment rather than an extension of day service provision. Similarly, North Lanarkshire supported employment scheme told us that most funding is tied up in Day Centres and their shifting of this tradition into employment-based thinking has created a radical difference in outlook for everyone involved. This reinforces the logic of the Norwegian model - think employment first - that has now been taken up in Glasgow.

People with learning disabilities can be treated in ways which give them parity with other employees, or in ways which treat them differently. Our focus groups gave examples, good and bad.

The first is a good example of 'fading' support in a regular job. The second shows how current structures still allow unequal treatment for the individual and uncertainty for all. Tina's employment status is unclear, she could be being treated unfairly and she could be unprotected if she had an accident at work.

We asked PiP co-ordinators what they thought employers could do which would most improve opportunities for quality supported employment for people with learning disabilities. There was a strong consensus.

Eleven out of 20 PiP co-ordinators thought that employers could do most to improve opportunities for quality supported employment for people with learning disabilities by re-examining equal opportunity policies, recruitment policies, and/or job descriptions with a view to improving access to work for people with a learning disability. Comments included 'Think creatively about how a job can be done', 'Ensure physical access', 'Offer flexible employment opportunities'.

Seven PiP co-ordinators identified overcoming 'prejudice' or fear of 'difference', the need for employers to have a 'better understanding of learning disability' or to understand that each individual has 'different needs', to 'value people's strengths and qualities' or to 'look at the long-term benefits ... not at the short-term difficulties'. These can be summarised as a need for employer training in diversity management with particular reference to learning disability.

We heard one example at our focus groups where better human resource management could clearly have kept someone in a job.

Other research has found that some people with more complex needs work in unpaid jobs or receive lower wages than other supported employees.
In addition there is evidence that they tend to have jobs which involve less interaction with other employees (Bass & Drewett 1996, in Weston, 2002). The more complex the need, the less people are treated 'the same as you'.

One of the key aims for supported employment agencies is to broker and maintain jobs that achieve equal treatment for people with learning disabilities. Our parents' focus group emphasised the importance of this basic need. All parents thought it important that their children's jobs were proper jobs for proper pay. Agencies may negotiate work placements, trainee positions, volunteer positions and so on, but strictly as an interim measure, with limited time and defined purpose. The primary role of supported employment agencies is to get people into proper commercial jobs with proper contracts and equal pay, ensuring that the person is able to use their full range of skills and develop their full potential.

Our PiP survey told us that lack of awareness was an extremely important factor influencing the employment of people with learning disabilities on several different levels.

Seven PiP co-ordinators wanted the Scottish Executive to promote more actively to employers the employment of people with learning disabilities. Suggestions included: 'working with employers to develop their capacity to employ people as equals'; 'golden hellos for employers' to 'investment in social firm infrastructure'.

Eight PiP co-ordinators thought that Jobcentre Plus should be doing more to increase employers' awareness of learning disability. Typical comments included 'Recognise the importance of quality marketing and publicity to promote the service and gain the respect of employers'; 'Focus on people's skills and abilities NOT disability'.

Five PiP co-ordinators thought that employers could do most to improve opportunities by providing disability awareness training for staff, including training on rights and on individual needs.

Five PiP co-ordinators thought that people with learning disabilities who are in work should promote the benefits of work to other people with learning disabilities.

The history of people with learning disabilities in Scotland is a history of separation: separate nurseries, separate schools, and not being present at work. This means that there is inevitably a lot of inadvertent stereotyping and ignorance to be overcome.

So, we suggest that awareness-raising should incorporate strategies to achieve broad social visibility and to achieve ordinary awareness by employers and employees in work contexts. It should incorporate direct work by people with learning disabilities and by Jobcentre Plus to achieve mainstream employment outcomes. People with a learning disability who are in work, and parents who have a son or daughter in work, are the best people to convince other families of the benefits of employment. It is also likely to be true that employers are the best people to convince other employers. Jobcentre Plus and the Scottish Executive will have key roles in raising awareness of learning disability in Scotland too.

One example of good practice is in Highland where each of the local PiP areas has a 'champion' for employment. The Scottish Executive could also raise the profile of people with learning disabilities as potential employees in their statements and policies on social inclusion. Later in the report we recommend mechanisms for strategically-increasing awareness.

For people with a learning disability, finding and getting work is particularly complex. There is a plethora of schemes and initiatives, and it can be hard to know who is responsible for what, even at the most simple level:

In our survey:

Eleven PiP co-ordinators thought that service providers could do most to improve opportunities for quality supported employment by working more strongly and coherently in partnerships with each other, with users, carers and employers.

Twelve PiP co-ordinators thought that Jobcentre Plus could do most to improve opportunities for quality supported employment through stronger joint working with other agencies, including joint training and involvement in transitions planning.

In most areas there is no single point of access for people with learning disabilities to obtain supported employment. Employment Focus by Jean Alcock (Common Knowledge) maps the myriad agencies in Glasgow and teases out further real difficulties caused by this fragmentation.

In the past people with learning disabilities have broadly been seen as 'unemployable', rather than as 'unemployed'. Therefore they became the responsibility of health or social work departments, and of the voluntary sector. But as this assumption has begun to change, locally diverse responses have developed. In some areas, for example, both the local authority and several voluntary organisations offer a range of employment and training services - some 'pure' supported employment, some training for employment, some sheltered workshops. This change is good, but this change has also led to inconsistency, complexity and difficulties in co-ordination.

But worse, mainstream employment services such as careers officers and government employment services have in the past not been accessible to people with a learning disability. Only one participant in Weston's (2002) study of 30 people with complex needs had found work through the then Employment Service. Although the Workstep programme has been more successful in addressing the needs of people with a learning disability, and the new all-age Careers Scotland is becoming more focused on inclusiveness there is still some way to go in providing a responsive, mainstreamed and most of all co-ordinated service to all who need it, including those with the most significant learning disabilities.

In our survey of PiP co-ordinators:

Thirteen of 20 PiP co-ordinators identified resource constraints as one of the three major barriers to achieving quality supported employment in Scotland, especially resources for staffing to sustain employment supports.

But, slightly differently, eleven PiP co-ordinators thought that the Scottish Executive could do most to improve opportunities for quality supported employment by providing mainstream funding for supported employment to enable it to end short-termism.

It is worth noting that two further PiP co-ordinators wanted the Executive to improve funding specifically for local authorities to develop supported employment.

In contrast to other services for people with learning disabilities (e.g. day services), supported employment projects have to rely on short-term project-based funding, often from a multiplicity of funders with different expectations and reporting requirements. The example below is from Renfrewshire.

Organisations that provide supported employment told us how this funding maze results in unacceptable inefficiencies for them. Disproportionate time spent by managers applying for funding and reporting to several 'masters' is disproportionate time lost from supporting people with learning disabilities at work.

Similarly, they told us that this funding uncertainty results in supported employment staff moving from project to project seeking job stability. This leads to an undermining of the vital continuity of relationship between supported employment worker, job seeker and employer. They told us that this problem is worsened by the wide national differential in salary levels for supported employment workers, reflecting both the problems of diverse funding sources and lack of co-ordination. The Employment short-life working group has found that starting salaries for employment workers across Scotland vary enormously, from 9,000 to 21,000.

The aim of supported employment is to include all, however complex our needs. But in the target-led culture demanded by short-term funding, there is an inbuilt incentive to target the 'most likely successes'. Although statistics are not routinely collected, history tells us that it is those with the most significant learning disabilities who are most likely to remain unemployed and socially excluded the longest. This will not change unless funding is mainstreamed, perhaps with the express purpose of targeting the most excluded first.

Another problem stemming from this fragmentation of funding is that there are considerable potential variations in quality between supported employment agencies, and no accepted framework for defining and assessing quality 'job brokering' in Scotland.

Eight out of 20 PiP co-ordinators in our survey thought that the Executive or service providers should prioritise national quality standards for supported employment.

Supported employment is provided through a diversity of local statutory and voluntary sector projects doing terrific work. But this does not amount to a coherent, nationally accessible service.

Conclusion

Most people with a learning disability want to work, but the great majority are unemployed for life. There has been a lack of co-ordinated action in Scotland to improve employment equity for this group.

We recommend a strategic approach at four levels, as shown in the pyramid diagram below.

A fairer and simpler tax and benefits system helps everyone to work.

The promotion of non-discrimination and equality removes barriers to recruitment for a whole range of disadvantaged groups including older people and people from ethnic minorities as well as disabled people.

Inclusive employment practices are particularly important for people who need some adjustment to the job so they can do it to the best of their ability. This might be a change in hours; some additional equipment; or carving up jobs differently so everyone can work to their strengths.

Changes at these three levels can make a great difference to the 'employability' of many different disadvantaged groups. But additionally, people with a learning disability may also need individualised, person-centred support to choose, get and keep a job or to run their own business. This support will be different for each person, it may be ongoing or 'fading' and will often need teamwork by several people including the employer.

Together, this requires leadership and co-ordination. The following section makes recommendations for changes in all four levels, together with recommendations for a co-ordinated approach to making it happen across the lifespan.