What do you think of, when you think about jobs for people with learning disabilities? The stereotype of a humble manual job, such as cleaner or porter, or working behind the counter in a cafe?
Do you think they are capable of more?
Some people, with more significant problems may always need some form of supported employment, But a report last week by the Scottish Commission on Learning Disability found that 120-150,000 adults with a learning disability are in need of more help to get a worthwhile job. The scale of the need is huge - only seven per cent of adults with a learning disability are employed.
Even then, as Maura Lynch, Depute Chief Executive of the SCLD points out, that doesn't mean it's a "proper" job. We need to be honest, she says, about the fact that working for three hours a week isn't a real job - it is more like day care. The Commission's report makes the distinction between those employed in jobs that offer sixteen hours or week a or less and more full time work.
Getting a real job is crucial, she says, because a job gives you money, and money gives you a life. Bringing people out of long-stay institutions and into the community has been an achievement, but those with learning disabilities won't have real independence and opportunity until they have the money to go to the cinema, to travel on the bus. Attitudes towards people with learning disabilities in wider society need to change and only visibility will do that.
The truth is many people, myself included, probably assume still think a learning disability can't do a lot of jobs. But Lynch says people covered by the study are holding down a wide-range of interesting and fulfilling jobs, and could do more if only we could be a bit more open-minded.
While employers, schools and colleges, predictably, are called upon to be less blinkered, even the parents of children with learning disabilities do not escape blame. The report says some fear exposing their adult children to the wider world, or possible disappointment, or may worry about a loss of income from benefits, if they encourage them to work.
The Scottish Government has a highly regarded policy on learning disability The Keys To Life. They commissioned the SCLD research. Its findings suggest the policy will remain merely good on paper, unless we all raise our expectations of people with a learning disability
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