BELINDA GLAISTER senior corporate account manager at Mencap, on the charity’s WorkRight scheme
“WorkRight is a three-year campaign to place 500 people with a learning disability into meaningful jobs by the end of 2008. Our targets are ambitious but we believe they are achievable. There are 700,000 people of working age with learning disabilities in the UK and 90 per cent are unemployed. This is terrible, and through WorkRight we aim to raise awareness of learning disability in the workplace and to reduce the unemployment rate significantly.
We’ve just come to the end of a year-long pilot of WorkRight and the scheme was officially launched on November 22. The pilot was carried out in partnership with Pitney Bowes and Citigroup. Pitney Bowes had expressed an interest in employing people with a learning disability on a local level before starting the WorkRight pilot, and Citigroup heard about the scheme through Pitney Bowes. Both firms have helped Mencap to develop a model of best practice in employing people with a learning disability and now we can take it to new employers.
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Often companies’ existing recruitment procedures unintentionally exclude people with a learning disability. WorkRight promotes various practices which help the employer and the employee — incorporating practical elements and longer interview periods to give people with a learning disability the chance to show off their skills as opposed to becoming uneasy in a formal interview. We also deliver learning disability training which is essential, especially for teams working directly with the employee.
It is important to remember that WorkRight isn’t about charity — it is real jobs for real people, and our pilot partners are proving the business case in employing people with a learning disability. They make keen, reliable and committed employees. We’re told by companies who have placed employees through WorkRight that their placements love their jobs — so much, in fact, that they don’t want to leave at the end of their working day. There is an untapped pool of labour out there.
Before working for Mencap I worked for Marie Curie Cancer Care. However, the majority of my experience comes from the private sector.
We’ve placed eight people in work over the course of the pilot scheme. Now I’m looking forward to working with employers to reach our goal of 500 by the end of 2008.”
CASE STUDY
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Doreen Chrapala works in a team of 60 people in Citigroup’s busy Canary Wharf postroom. She joined in May last year after her local job centre told her about Mencap’s WorkRight scheme. She hasn’t looked back since.
“Five weeks after my first contact [with Mencap] I was interviewed for my present job,” Doreen said.
She had been registered with the job centre for two years. In her experience, what really stood out about the WorkRight scheme was the way in which Mencap listened to her needs and took her previous roles into account before informing her of the vacancy.
“They took everything into consideration,” Doreen added. Having worked previously in post management, she wanted to continue in such a role.
When asked about the highlights of her current job, she said: “I enjoy the people and I love the company . . . if I need help I’ve only got to ask.”