A Fairer Scotland for disabled people: working for change

Next steps

At the Congress on Disability, Employment and the Workplace, we have announced:

• A commitment to £1million spend on business engagement confirming our intention to work across all sectors to achieve our ambition. Every sector has a role and we will ensure we use the levers and mechanism available to us to shift attitudes.
• Our intention to publish a detailed action plan for at least halving the Disability Employment Gap in autumn this year.
• A consultation on disabled employment in the public sector, which will close on 15 August 2018.

The Equality Academy NHS Graduate Programme, delivered by Glasgow Centre for Inclusive Living ( GCIL), in partnership with NHS Boards and the Scottish Government, enables Scotland’s NHS to take advantage of the pool of talent that exists in Scotland’s disabled graduate community and to give those graduates the opportunity to learn and develop the necessary skills to allow them to have an equal chance of competing in the labour market.

Henry Acres is one of the graduates that took advantage of the opportunity afforded to him. While studying at University he was assessed by an Educational Psychologist as having specific learning difficulties. Henry says: “The programme has been a fantastic opportunity for me as a first foray into the world of work. Very few people would have had the chance to engage with all levels of an organisation and work on major change at such an early point in their career. I cannot thank GCIL enough for making this possible and I genuinely believe that thanks to them I have gained a significant step up in my career progression. The experience GCIL and The State Hospital have given me was instrumental in my being offered a place on the Scottish Government Graduate Development Programme. I cannot recommend the Equality Academy’s Professional Careers Programme highly enough, as it has given me opportunities I didn’t think possible when I graduated. The programme has taught me so much about myself and my disability in the process, and because of this I now see my disability as a key strength and an asset to future employers”.

Henry Acres
NHS Internship

We’re determined that the Scottish Government does all it can to help disabled people fulfil their potential. We know that you are the experts.

That’s why, in the last year we have doubled our efforts to reach out to disabled people, their organisations as well as employers to find out what their priorities for change are.

Common themes have arisen during all of our consultations and engagement sessions, including:

• Supporting and challenging employers, as part of a broader Fair Work agenda;
• Creating more effective support for people to remain in work, including more joined-up work and health (including mental health) services;
• Support to help people into work, including through new devolved employment services, as well as action in areas such as transport and social security;
• Smarter transitions for young people, including in areas such as skills, education and apprenticeships.

Our target to at least halve the Disability Employment Gap requires all of us to work in partnership. Employers, disabled people and their organisations have a vast well of knowledge on how to go about this. We want to continue to harness this knowledge in the best way possible to reach our goal.

This Autumn, we will publish our Disability Employment Action Plan, which will set out how, working together, we plan to make our ambition a reality.

We want to continue to work with you on the development of that plan, if you wish to help shape the Action Plan, please contact: disabilitycongress@gov.scot.

Driving transformational change – Supporting Employers