Observations From Below: Celebrating National Disability Employment Awareness Month
So far, I really enjoy having seats on the NC Council on Developmental Disabilities (NCCDD) as well as on the board for Disability Rights North Carolina (DRNC). Both of these positions allow me to see and talk about important developments in the disability policy of North Carolina as well as the rest of America. As I mentioned in previous blogs, employment has been one of the last remaining hurdles that people with disabilities face. A while ago I wrote a 3-part blog about my personal journey towards my first paying job. It’s very frustrating to me that finding competitive employment remains a struggle, despite the ADA being passed 26 years ago. I would like to see that every person with a disability who wants a job, find the resources to help them attain one.
We have a while to go before my dreams become a reality, and there are many efforts underway. October has been named National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM), which has been celebrated since its inception in 1945. Its initial moniker was National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week, and it was designed to encourage the public to hire people with disabilities. According to a press release from respectability.org, it appears that “our nation is beginning to see an improvement in the employment opportunities for the one in five Americans with disabilities. As reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the labor force participation rate for working-age people with disabilities increased to 31 percent in August 2016.”
Nationally there’s a relatively new tool for businesses called the Disability Equality Index (DEI) which combines the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) and the US Business Leadership Network (USBLN). The USBLN is a group established so that businesses can talk to other businesses about best practices whereas the AAPD is one of the leading disability rights associations in the US. The DEI evaluates the atmosphere of over 80 disability inclusive companies such as AMC, AT&T, Capital One, Delta, Hewlett-Packard, Sprint, and many more. They are scored on a scale from 0-100 and are graded on a number of standards within four basic categories: Culture & Leadership, Enterprise-Wide Access, Employment Practices, and Community Engagement & Support Services. Companies that score over 80 are publicly lauded, whereas those scoring less remains anonymous.
Here in North Carolina, there are also promising signs. We have a branch of the USBLN called the NC Business Leadership Network (NCBLN). I had the honor of addressing the members of the NCBLN and telling them my story, shortly before my appointment to the NCCDD. The NCBLN is also growing, and I would like to see more local companies in the Triad step up and join. The NCBLN along with the NCCDD have several ongoing initiatives to spur growth in employment in the Tarheel state.
I sit on a subcommittee of the council which oversees financial asset development initiatives. We have been supporting a website produced by Western Carolina University called Roads to Learning and Earning (rtle.org), which is a great transition tool for middle and high school students with I/DD. Not only does it talk about postsecondary education options, it also has a wealth of information about employment outcomes. We also support financial literacy classes for people with I/DD in an initiative called Upward to Financial Stability. Many households headed by individuals with disabilities are often underbanked or unbanked, meaning they don’t have a strong relationship to the financial system. This initiative aims to educate and change that imbalance.
The Council also continues to bolster its employment efforts by encouraging the formation of new Project SEARCH sites. Project SEARCH is a program designed to help people with I/DD obtain jobs, which started at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. It has expanded since its formation in 1996 to over 400 sites worldwide and is no longer limited to just hospitals.
Lastly, according to the publicly available list of targets for next year, Disability Rights North Carolina is committed to establishing legal rights to an honest job by reducing the reliance on subminimum wage work environments, commonly called sheltered workshops. Their goal is to“provide rights-based individual advocacy services to 35 individuals not currently in a sheltered workshop who are seeking or trying to maintain competitive, integrated employment.” Their website also offers many different self-advocacy resources for people seeking employment, and I encourage everyone to look at it.
Happy National Disability Employment Awareness Month, ya’ll!
#RespectTheAbility #InclusionWorks
That’s how I roll….