The context and objectives of WorkAble are to develop 12 good practice case studies through knowledge exchange visits between four partner countries; UK, Poland, Greece and Romania. The case studies are designed to give teachers, both within the project and across the EU, guidance in preparing innovative work programmes for disabled young people to strengthen opportunities for sustainable employment after school or college. Partners are chosen carefully, as each have innovative work based learning practices to share but also because disability employment is a key issue in each partner country. A Eurostat poll of October 2019 indicated the percentage of population of young people aged 16 and over at risk of poverty and social exclusion because of inactivity in the labour market because of disability in Greece at 32.3%, Poland at 29,5%, Romania at 37.6% and the UK at 32.2%. With the Highest in North Macedonia at 50.7%. Improving opportunities for young people with disabilities to enter employment is a key objective in vocational education and training. Professional development of teachers to deliver innovative work programmes through VET is essential, and this project aims to do just that. This project aims to provide guidance through developing and publishing 12 models of good practice across four partner organisations in the VET of people with disabilities. The focus will be on those schemes that provide innovative training and work programmes that support employment opportunities for disabled learners. These will include best practice in; • Giving advice and guidance services for future employment for persons with disabilities: • Work skills teaching programmes for Persons with disabilities • Employer engagement models • Setting up social enterprise models for employment • Developing Entrepreneurship • Establishing a work based learning curriculum • Learner voices – Models of student engagement and capturing feedback. Stories of successful employment placements and placements that have not worked well. • Good practice examples of specific vocational work suited to person with specific disabilities. Teachers will see 12 innovative models of best practice hosted by each partner and be able to develop their own working practice – Each partner will develop three case studies in detail and publish these in order to share through a project website to other organisations working in VET with disabled learners or trainees. The overall aim is to promote inclusion within employment for young people with disabilities across the EU – to look at what is working well and share this to enable others to develop opportunities in VET for greater innovation and inclusion in working practice for young people with disabilities. To do this the project will schedule one week long visit to each partner country by three representatives from each partner over two years of the project in order to observe specific examples of innovative work-based learning or and employment practice. The project will give opportunities for 12 professionals working within specialist work based learning from each country, to see and share examples of good practice. These will be developed into 12 case studies, 3 from each partner country and published to a project web site. Case studies will aim to give practice guidance on innovative methods and schemes that are successfully supporting employment and inclusion for young disabled people. It is envisaged that these case studies will provide an incentive of ideas that will be a legacy for all VET teachers working with young people with disabilities and employers looking for ways to improve access to the labour market across the EU.
The results of this project are the professional development of 12 teachers working in VET with people with disabilities. They achieved this by undertaking knowledge sharing visits to see best practice in the delivery of VET and employment programmes in each partner country. Each partner developed three case studies each, 12 case studies in total, of best practice models and training schemes specifically aimed at VET learners who have disabilities. The case studies enable other VET trainers working with people with disabilities to review and improve their practice. The case studies appear on the project website. Each partner was originally chosen for their expertise in this domain as a national centre for good and innovative practice working with learners with disabilities. The web platform details each organisation and outlines their expertise and work training programmes. The case studies involve videos, learning resources, curriculum models and associated links. They also detail staffing roles, assessment and induction and how learners with particular disabilities are supported. We wanted to achieve an increase in knowledge by sharing good practices though observation visits to each partner organisation and also to prepare guidance for others working in this field across Europe to learn from the good practice exhibited.
The context and objectives of WorkAble was to develop 12 good practice case studies through knowledge exchange visits by professionals working in specialist education in order to strengthen employment opportunities for young disabled people leaving secondary and tertiary education. The case studies have been designed to give teachers, both within the project and across the EU, guidance in preparing innovative work programmes for disabled young people to strengthen their opportunities for sustainable employment after school or college. Partners were chosen carefully, as each have innovative practices to share but also because disability employment is a key issue in each partner country. A Eurostat poll of October 2019 indicated the percentage of population of young people aged 16 and over at risk of poverty and social exclusion because of disability leading to inactivity in the labour market. In Greece it was at 32.3%, Poland at 29,5%, Romania at 37.6% and the UK at 32.2%. With the Highest in North Macedonia at 50.7%. Improving opportunities for young people with disabilities to enter employment was a key objective in vocational education and training. The professional development of teachers and other professionals working in specialist education is paramount to enable the delivery of innovative work programmes through VET and this project achieved this through 12 inspiring case studies of good practice. In the UK between April and June 2017 there were 3.5 million disabled people of working age in employment, an employment rate of 49.2% against 80.6% for non-disabled people. In Greece, the full time employment rate for disabled people aged 15-64 years old is 4.3%, putting Greece to 26th place among the 28 European countries. The part-time employment rate for disabled people aged 15-64 years old 7.8 %, putting Greece to 27th place among 28 European countries. In Poland in 2019, 4710 thousand persons, i.e. 35.9% of the total of the economically inactive, were at the working age. A significant reason for economic inactivity is illness or disability. In Romania, the total number of disabled people was 759,019 (3.41% of Romanian population). About 415,852 (54.8%) were aged between 18 and 64. Rate of employment of disabled persons is still very small (14%). People with somatic disability represent the most employed category (38.4%); least employed were the in the mental (3.1%) and psychiatric (5.2%) categories. Education and training play a significant part in ensuring young people with disabilities receive the training, guidance and opportunities to work. This is way we carried out this project trans nationally, using best practice models in each partner country through each organisations specialist expertise in working with young people with disabilities. The resulting case studies on the WorkAble website www.work-able.co.uk guide others working with disabled learners to improving opportunities both in the partner countries and across the EU.