The Labour Party has announced a guarantee to give young people independent, face-to-face advice, delivered by careers professionals trained to provide information and guidance on academic and vocational qualifications.
I spent more time choosing my first digital camera than I did my career. Although I knew what I wanted to do at a young age, I’d have certainly benefited from advice suggesting other ideas and options. That’s probably why I’ve shifted career direction twice since graduating from university.
Disabled people also need an element of vision as to how their condition might affect their work and choice of career. Although career options should never be closed off for disabled people, it seems sensible to advise young disabled people to think carefully about the kind of working conditions that would allow them to thrive both physically and mentally and for them to be cautious about taking on roles that will condemn them to exacerbations.
Any careers advice should be individually tailored to suit and therefore involve different ideas that will help disabled people access the help they need to become a success at whatever they choose to do. Ideas like getting in touch with ‘Access To Work’ or applying assistive technology as well as reasonable adaptations will be essential to their career success – all within the arena of the rights of disabled people in the workforce.
The careers landscape is vast but yet young people still seem to be shuffled into roles where they don’t always get to use their individual skills, specific qualifications or indeed personal traits – hence we get people working in customer service that quite obviously have no interest in and a disdain for, serving customers!
Figures published this week by the National Office for Statistics state that British workers are less productive than workers in Italy and France. Are we lazy or are we just not getting the best out of people as a resource?
Disabled people are statistically amongst the most loyal and hardworking – in that they have fewer days off sick (perhaps because of the care they take in monitoring their own conditions).
My hope is that whoever wins the election, schemes like the Disability Confident roadshow as set up under the Conservatives a couple of years ago will continue to make a difference to young people in choosing a career and also to employers in terms of seeing beyond disability and utilising a ready workforce.
