Employers Urged to Help People with Disabilities

Australia’s employers have been called on to play their part to lower Australia’s unemployment rate for people with a disability 

The event took place at the National Disability Employment Service conference in Hobart. 

The inductees are:

Associate Professor Greg Lewis, Executive Director, EDGE Employment Solutions, Perth who set a benchmark in Australia for open employment services that find real and long-term work for people with physical, intellectual and psychiatric disabilities.

Trevor Parmenter, AM Professor Emeritus in the Sydney School of Medicine, University of Sydney, one of the architects of Australia’s Disability Services Act and a pioneer of work experience programs for people with an intellectual disability.

Craig Harrison, General Manager, Personnel Employment (a division of Barkuma Inc), South Australia who has led Australia in developing school-to-work transitions for young people with a disability.

ACE National Network chair Donna Faulkner congratulated the inductees and called on Australia’s employers to play their part to lower Australia’s unemployment rate for people with a disability. 

Faulkner says the Hall of Famers have done their part – researching, innovating and lifting expectations and now it's time for employers to do the same. 

She says employers must take their disability action plans off the shelf and put them into action. 

She says workers with a disability are an untapped resource for our employers but too few Australian employers are willing to change the way they think.

ACE National Network is the peak body for Australia's Disability Employment Service (DES) and is made up of 240 organisations – some private, some Not for Profit – which work with employers and disabled people to create jobs in the open market alongside people without disabilities.  ACE represents these organisations to government.

For more information go to www.acenational.org.au