About the Comprehensive Employment Strategy
In October 2015, the Government published a ten-year Comprehensive Employment Strategy for People with Disabilities (2015-2024). This is a cross-Government approach to bring together actions by different Government departments and state agencies to address the barriers and challenges to the employment of people with disabilities.
The six strategic priorities are:
Build skills, capacity and independence
Provide bridges and support into work
Make work pay
Promote job retention and re-entry to work
Provide coordinated and seamless support
Engage employers
Three year action plans have been developed for the Comprehensive Employment Strategy. The final three-year action plan for 2022-2024 is currently under development. The previous three year action plan ran from 2019 to 2021.
The National Disability Authority’s Role under the Comprehensive Employment Strategy
We work to support the implementation of the Comprehensive Employment Strategy in several ways. We sit on the Comprehensive Employment Strategy Implementation Group where we provide our independent advice.
We also provide advice through our direct engagement with the departments and agencies concerned and through working groups and committees. We use our research and data gathering and analysis to inform our policy work.
We produce an annual independent Assessment of Progress of the Comprehensive Employment Strategy. Our assessments do not provide a detailed analysis of each of the actions in the Strategy, but instead focus on broader areas or themes, drawing on actions relevant to those themes and highlighting areas where further focus and commitment may be required.
Monitoring Comprehensive Employment Strategy Indicators
In 2020 we published a mid-term analysis of the suite of indicators for monitoring progress under the Comprehensive Employment Strategy (CES) for people with disabilities 2015-2024.
Research to Inform the Comprehensive Employment Strategy
This report was commissioned by the National Disability Authority and carried out by the Work Research Centre Social and Economic Consultants. The report provides a blueprint for a system that would engage fully with people with a disability and address the changes in employment, education and welfare policies required. There are a number of recommendations in the report that fed into our contributions to the Comprehensive Employment Strategy and other policies such as Make Work Pay.
This paper is a National Disability Authority synthesis of presentations that took place at a seminar in 2011 to inform the development of the Comprehensive Employment Strategy. The paper captures information on good practice approaches to support people with intellectual disability to obtain and retain employment.