Disability Champions Return to Belfast

The seminar was opened by Peter Bunting, Assistant General Secretary of the ICTU. Peter praised the work of the committee and commended the book “Addressing Disability in the Workplace: A Guide for Trade Unionists” that was launched at the event. Talking of the dangers of stereotyping Peter said “If you constantly judge a book by its cover you may as well be illiterate”.

The next speaker was Aideen McGinley, Permanent Secretary of the Department for Employment and Learning. Praising the new guide Aideen stressed that no publication was of any use if it remained unread on a shelf and if nobody ever acts on its recommendations.

Professor Roy McConkey made an excellent contribution entitled “Making Inclusive Employment a Reality”. Roy was a member of the University of Ulster group that drafted the Bamford Review on disability and employment. He emphasised the need for change by quoting Henry Viscardi who said:-

This quotation set the scene for a theme of expectation; especially for disabled kids. He showed a graph of answers to the question where do you see the future – a job, a day centre, a mix of the two or ‘not sure’. Less than half of parents of children with learning needs saw their kids with a job, about a third saw them in day centres. This contrasted sharply when the kids were asked the same question; 95% of them saw the future in a job. We shouldn’t loose sight of our role as Disability Champions in shaping our workplaces to make those children’s vision a reality.

A UNESCO commission on special education in 1988 concluded that education should be individually centred, orientated to the local environment and lead to productive employment. Professor McConkey added that this productive employment could be household work, voluntary work, supported employment, paid employment, self employment or as part of a family business – but it must give a sense of self worth and inclusion.

Evelyn Collins – CEO of the Equalities Commission summarised the DDA and the many changes that has taken place to the legislation since is first appeared in 1995. She stressed that the Commission support and use the social model of disability and that she was pleased to see an explanation of this in the trade union guide being launched. She went on to say that the Commission have won over £450,000 in compensation for disabled workers in Northern Ireland who has taken discrimination cases against their employer.

Following coffee Mencap’s Learning Disability Equality Officer, Joanne McDonald, addressed the seminar. She described the difficulties she had experiences as person with a learning disability trying to get a job. “we’ve all had good, bad and ugly interviews but believe me I’ve had some ugly ones!” she said. She has held her current post at Mencap for 18 months. She told us that “having a job brings structure to my life and gives me something to look forward to every day”. Thinking back to Peter Bunting’s opening address it was clear that beyond Joanne’s ‘cover’ was an eloquent intelligent woman whose talents had been missed my many potential employers.

Next came Martin Howells, Director of the Employer’s Forum. He saw his role as providing advise and support to employers looking to hire disabled employees and to promote positive action. He said that whilst many of his members said they did make adjustments they were often the easy adjustments such as ramps and that much more needed to be done by employers to support people with sensory and learning disabilities.

Then it was my turn. For once I wasn’t first up! This gave me the opportunity to point out that we had heard from trade unions, employers, support organisations and disabled workers and everybody was saying the same thing – so why wasn’t it happening? This, I argued, is where Disability Champions come into their own. I went on to explain the project and the role and gave an overview of the position in both Northern Ireland and the Republic. Much more needs to be done here. The success of the project in Great Britain is largely down to the support of the TUC – this is where ICTU and the NIC can help. “We need to adapt the course materials etc to match both sets of Irish legislation and make sure courses happen over here”. I concluded by encouraging everyone to take a copy of our literature, visit the website and to become a Disability Champion themselves.

Finally came Colin Wilman from the Federation of Small Businesses. He admitted that he fought hard to keep trade unions out of the small business world but did say that he was involved in evaluating some of the European Year of Disabled People 2003 projects and commended us for our work and the sustainability of the project.

The event concluded with a panel session with some good questions and answers exchanged. The job done it was down to Central Station and a train to Dublin to meet with David Joyce of the ICTU to discuss making our expectations of a successful project in Ireland a reality.

Many thanks to Berni and Owen McCrea for their work organising this event and for looking after me as always.

Dave

13th November 2006