People living with disability
We strive to make the Blue Mountains an inclusive and accessible city so that all members of the community of different abilities can participate in all aspects of community life. We do this through...
Watch 'Access and Inclusion is Good For Business'
Overall, building an inclusive, diverse workforce benefits everyone – your employees, your organisation and your community as a whole.
Nepean Jobs For All was a joint project of Blue Mountains, Hawkesbury, and Penrith City Councils, funded through a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Information, Linkage, and Capacity building grant.
The aim of the project was to raise awareness about the under-employment of people with disability, and the benefits to business of employing people with disability. Its key messages are:
The project started with 3 educational business breakfasts, one in each Local Government Area, that provided some introductory information about the challenge, presented by Australian Network on Disability. Following these breakfasts, interested businesses could receive ongoing support and assistance as needed, in order to assist their business in being more inclusive in their recruitment of staff.
Many people think it’s important to treat people equally, but equal treatment may not achieve equity. Equity is where we do things differently (acknowledge and accommodate difference) to allow the person to be on a level playing field.
In all three pictures below, everyone would like to see the sports game, but only in the third picture is the situation provided whereby everyone can easily view the game (while still being safely behind the fence). An environment has been created where everyone can participate. The cartoon is a metaphor for the adjustments needed in workplaces to ensure that people with disability can participate alongside their peers.
The following information may be of interest to local businesses:
Employ outside the box: the benefits of diversifying your workforce
Australian Network on Disability
NSW Government: See the possibilities
This Nepean Jobs For All project ended in August 2018. Throughout the project, 27 presentations to business and community groups were delivered. More than 190 businesses were engaged. Nine business received further ongoing support and information about disability inclusion, and two of these business proceeded to employ a person with disability. Three people were employed by businesses involved with Nepean Jobs For All.
The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Business School were engaged to conduct an evaluation of the project which, when complete, will be available to download here.