The provincial government has launched a new program aimed at helping disabled Albertans gain meaningful employment.
The government is spending $2 million to create the Employment First Innovation Fund. The fund aims to spur companies, non-profit organizations and public education institutions to find more innovative approaches to get more disabled Albertans working.
There are about 369,000 disabled people living in Alberta, and of those, the employment rate in the working-age population is 15 per cent lower than in the non-disabled population.
Disabilities range from long-term physical disabilities to mental, sensory and intellectual impairments.
“The innovation fund is to try out new solutions or expand on already proven successful pilot projects that connect Albertans who have disabilities to employment. It's about improving their quality of life because as we all know, employment provides a lot of things: of course income and the independence that comes with income as well as the opportunity to learn new skills and feel a closer connection to your community,” Charles Strachey, a spokesperson with Alberta Human Services, told the Gazette.
If leaders at companies, public education institutions and non-profit organizations feel they have a new approach to integrating people with disabilities into the workforce, they can apply to the program for funding until August 1.
Currently, the provincial government invests $31 million per year in more traditional employment programs to help integrate people with disabilities into the workforce.
“We provide resume (assistance), assistance with job search, some agencies even work with employers directly to place people into employment, but what we're kind of looking for is new ideas, things that people think would be neat and effective but they just haven't been able to find the funding to be able to try them,” Strachey said.
The provincial government also hosted an innovations in employment symposium on May 22 and 23 in Edmonton, which drew 400 academics, agency personnel, employers and people with disabilities talking about their employment experiences.
More than 2,000 people saw the conference through a webcast.
“It was a way to share things that everyone has learned about hiring people with disabilities,” Strachey said.
Barb Kerr, a coordinator with the Rocky Mountain House Society for Persons with Disabilities, attended the conference in Edmonton. She said the conference was extremely positive.
“It had a lot of energy to it,” Kerr said, adding that agency personnel were excited to learn as much information as possible to help their clients.
“Most of the discussions were very good. They did tend to lean more towards the larger centres, like Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer. It's harder and I think we have more unique challenges (addressing the issue) in smaller centres than they do in the larger communities,” she said.
Government officials will be visiting rural communities throughout the province in the coming months and trying to tailor an employment strategy for rural communities, which Kerr said should be helpful.
In many cases, Kerr said, agencies in rural communities can't collaborate as well on strategies as those in larger centres because in rural communities agencies are more geographically spread out.
One of the topics that wasn't addressed as well as it could have been, in Kerr's opinion, was how to accommodate people with more challenges than others in a job setting.
She said at her agency, for example, many clients would need a certain amount of assistance with job tasks, and the conference didn't address how to integrate those individuals into the workforce.
"It's harder and I think we have more unique challenges (addressing the issue) in smaller centres than they do in the larger communities."Barb KerrcooordinatorRocky Mountain House Society for Persons with Disabilities
