Undiscovered Workforce campaign gathers pace

We've had loads of interest from ambassadors and champions in our Undiscovered Workforce campaign on employment. The campaign asks MPs to take the lead in creating employment opportunities for their constituents with autism, by bringing together local employers, people with autism, the local authority and other services in the community. The aim is to raise awareness of the difficulties facing people with autism who are looking for work and to ensure there is specialist support available for employers, as well as employees, to help people with autism succeed in the workplace.

Helen Kelly, an Ambassador from Tyne and Wear, supports the campaign because she is concerned for her 12-year-old daughter who has autism. "Her future worries me", she says, "She will be trying to get a job and I think her autism will be a disadvantage. There needs to be more awareness of the condition out there and people with autism should have the right to the proper support in a job".

Although she admits she was a little nervous at first, Helen wrote to her MP on the issue - the first time she had ever contacted him. However, her feelings soon changed when she realised she'd been sent a standard letter: "To be honest, I was a bit annoyed to get a generic email in reply. This is a serious thing - you can't just send a generic response".

Helen contacted the NAS with her MP's reply and we gave her a special response letter we've written for Ambassadors and Champions to send when they're not satisfied with their MP's response to the Undiscovered Workforce campaign.

Now Helen's looking to the next steps in her campaigning: "I would like to meet my MP and put my case forward. This is a real issue, not only for people who are in the workplace now but also for those people with autism who will be working in the future. There are thousands of people in this situation, and the have the right to work like everybody else"

If you want to support the Undiscovered Workforce campaign you can send a letter to your MP through our website here: www.autism.org.uk/undiscoveredworkforce. If you've already sent an initial email and haven't received a reply or aren't satisfied with the response you have received, don't be afraid to politely challenge them on it. Or if your MP asks you how they can help, make sure you take them up on their offer. Get in touch us at aan@nas.org.uk and we'll give you advice on what to do next. 

There are loads of great things going on with the Undiscovered Workforce campaign around the country - we've had MPs writing to local businesses, organising breakfast events and pushing Local Authorities to set up supported employment services - don't let your area miss out!

Ralph on the SEARCH for employment

Ralph Hemus, campaigning for the National Autistic Society, recently hosted a superb radio feature on FromeFM “Our Vision, Our Future” to promote an exciting programme to help young people with learning disabilities find paid jobs in his local area.

Project SEARCH, operating through Bath and North East Somerset Council, combines classroom teaching with practical work experience within the council including schools and partner organisations.

It is a training program for special needs students who have completed their academic requirements but would benefit from a workforce development program that includes employability skills and internships in a local but large business.

Ralph recently gained the job of Admin Officer at the council after his year on Project SEARCH. On his radio show, he introduces teachers and job coaches to talk about the programme, including his own coach Pauline, who spoke of the importance of letting young people with learning disabilities know that “work can be a positive experience”. Ralph also discusses his own experience as an intern, describing the benefits of reduced anxiety and gaining a better idea of what he wants to do through taking part in supported placements. Ralph's show also includes interviews with his fellow students, including 19 year old Chloe, who like Ralph has successfully got a paid job. “I think Project SEARCH helped me out a lot by giving me confidence”, Chloe said of the project, adding that she had not travelled on her own until taking part in Project SEARCH, and that her favourite thing about her new job as a receptionist was the opportunity to meet people.

Gaining paid employment was the unanimous wish of the young people interviewed, and many also emphasised that they wanted to live independently. Described by one of its coaches as “a mixture of fun and hard work”, Project SEARCH aims to make this possible by incorporating job skills and personal independence training with internship experience in a variety of fields, including administrative and clerical work, catering, maintenance support, customer service, and care work with children or the elderly. In order to support the specific needs of young people on the programme, students can access their job instructions in the form of tick lists, prompt cards or photographs as their needs require, and the work experience is supplemented by practical skills coaching.

It was not only the young people who reported good experiences in their involvement with Project SEARCH. Ralph has also worked to promote Project SEARCH to local employers, interviewing employer participants across businesses and services who described the interns as assets to their workplace. Heather Thomas at Keynsham Health Centre encouraged other local and national businesses to offer placements, explaining how helpful the Health Centre’s intern had been at carrying out administrative tasks during a particularly busy time. The Deputy Headteacher at Castle Primary School also spoke warmly of watching interns “really grow in confidence” and emphasised that to employers like her, “the benefits far outweigh any organisation that has to be done”.

Ralph’s guests closed the feature by thanking him for his hard work promoting a scheme that has not only benefited him but has encouraged many other young people and employers. The feature identified ongoing challenges, such as the high rate of unemployment amongst young and especially young disabled people, the lack of infrastructure in some areas making it difficult for interns to get to work and the challenge of changing employer attitudes. Despite these challenges, Ralph and the interns and staff at Project SEARCH have demonstrated that given the right support, young people with autism and / or learning disabilities can truly thrive in employment, bringing great benefit both to themselves and to their communities.

To listen to Ralph’s fantastic radio show online, go to http://www.fromefm.co.uk/ and look for ‘Ralph’s Finest Hour – 2^nd June 2012.

For more information on the National Autistic Society’s Undiscovered Workforce campaign, follow this link.

Tony meets his MP about the Undiscovered Workforce

I met with Justine Greening, my local MP, to help the Undiscovered Workforce campaign.

 

We spoke about adjustments in the workplace and talked about experiences in job interviews. Justine was a good listener and was very interested in the campaign and was going away to learn more from another MP, Lee Scott, who is also supporting the campaign.

 

Why don't you do the same as me and support this campaign? Write to your mp, go to their weekly surgeries. Let's all raise this issue together and help each other to get into the workplace.

 

Tony

Neil discusses campaigning on employment

20th March 2012 and the eve of the budget. The concerns of the nation are how much more will public services be cutback upon. And yet there, in the House Of Commons, was the NAS launching their campaign "The Undiscovered Workforce".

Now times are tough for everybody, and it is always likely to be the dream of any government to get as many people as possible back into employment, not only to improve the pride of the nation, reduce the amount of benefit being paid whilst at the same time increasing the amount of tax being received through earnings, but also because of the enormous loss of production from untapped talent.

Some of the most untapped talent comes from the Autistic community. Many of these are highly intellectual, in fact it is rumoured that Einstein himself probably had Aspergers Syndrome, and yet only 15% are in full-time employment, and even for these, they might be under-achieving because their employers are not making the necessary adjustments to get the best out of them.

The guest list at the launch party did have a wide variety of the types of people involved - several Members of Parliament, of course (otherwise why have the event there?), people who work for the NAS, some employers and, significantly, a number of people with Aspergers Syndrome, including myself.

I was invited in my role as an ambassador for the Autistic Action Network campaigning on employment issues, and in two months time will be hosting an event of my own featuring the American writer Rudy Simone, who herself has Aspergers Syndrome and had many issues in jobs where she worked before she became self-employed as a writer and speaker on the subject. I am hoping that this event will attract employers and open their minds.

It is very important to involve all these types of people in order to ensure that the conditions are put in place to enable those of us with Aspergers Syndrome and Autism who have the ability to be on benefit to employers and make them more profitable, to be able to realise our potential.

This will be a slow process but for now, the first thing I would like to see implemented is training of Human Resources managers on the issues facing people with Aspergers Syndrome and high-functioning Autism as part of their curriculum. This would be in liaison with the CIPD. As one of the parties of our coalition government once said "education, education, education", let us at least see this start to happen.

It will take the involvement of many people for this to happen. Governments cannot do it alone, nor can the NAS Prospects team nor people with Aspergers Syndrome. We must all learn to work together to achieve this goal.

The Undiscovered Workforce

The stats for people with autism and employment aren’t good. Just 15% of adults with autism are in full-time employment. 30% aren’t in employment OR receipt of benefits. I fall into the latter category. My husband earns a lot less than the national average wage, but works enough hours for me not to be entitled to JSA. When I was in work, I was underemployed. When I apply for jobs, even unpaid work, I am frequently given the feedback that they think I might be bored in the job or that other people were a better fit for the team, but I don’t have the experience to go for jobs that are at a higher level. I can’t hide what I am like in order to fit in and lots of people don’t seem to get why I struggle with seemingly everyday things. I know that is the case for many adults with autism – as many as 79% of people with autism on out of work benefits say they want to work, but need support, and that reflects my not-on-benefits perspective too.

I had emailed my MP Rachel Reeves in the past. I had just sent her general things to do with adults with autism before, but it was time in my new role as an ambassador for the NAS to ask her for something specific. I know Rachel cares about employment, economic activity and women in work, so I wrote to her to ask for a meeting. I wanted her to know how bad the statistics are for adults with autism, and that many of us want to work but need help to get, succeed in and sustain appropriate jobs. I want employers, the local authority, HR departments, careers advisers, recruiters and prospective colleagues to understand what it is like for people with autism in work and to offer that support. I thought Rachel might be able to help me to get these people together and talk about how it is now and how it could be.

The meeting was on Friday March 2^nd. I took Eleanor from the NAS with me, as I get nervous in meetings and interviews and she was able to help with all the stats and names that fly out of my head when I am talking passionately. The meeting was at a library in Leeds and we realised on arrival that our slot was only five minutes long. No pressure, then. I thought I might not get everything out, and all that would happen was that Rachel would think I was crazy and agree to think about it to get me out of the room. But the unbelievable happened, and she seemed to be as excited about it as we were. She listened to everything I had to say, made some excellent points herself and wanted to help me to get this disparate group of people together to make things happen. It IS going to happen. I am going to be part of organising something special. It was scary, and I stuttered and stumbled my way through it, but it felt great too.

My fervent hope is that this meeting is the start of something bigger. Yes, getting all the people I mentioned together to talk about this issue and how they can help in Leeds, but talk is cheap. I want attitudes to change and the support for people like me to be put in place everywhere. I want all the people connected with employment in the region to really get it and want to do something about it themselves, because 15% of people with autism in full time work when one in a hundred adults has autism, is not enough. Not just because of the current economic crisis or the idea that work provides self-worth, but because we are an interesting, exciting, diverse group of people with something unique to offer to the workplace.

Penny