Promoting Inclusion for People with Intellectual Disabilities
Supported Employment
Supported employment has been successfully used for decades as a personalised model for supporting people with significant disabilities to secure and retain paid employment.
The model uses a partnership strategy to enable people with disabilities to achieve sustainable long-term employment and for businesses to employ valuable workers.
Increasingly, supported employment techniques are being used to support other disadvantaged groups such as young people leaving care, ex-offenders and people recovering from drug and alcohol misuse.
Work plays a pivotal role in defining an individual's quality of life and can be an integral part of a person's overall life experience.
Supported employment is an innovative process that enables employment as an achievable goal for people with disabilities just as it does for non disabled people in our society.
Real jobs mean that the terms and conditions for people with disabilities should be the same as for everyone else including pay at the contracted going rate, equal employee benefits, safe working conditions and opportunities for career advancement.
Accessing Kare's Supported Employment Programme
Kare service users are invited to self-refer or receive support from staff to access the service. To access the Supported Employment Programme please use the Contact Us form on this website.
Work Experience and Job Sampling Programme
To support individuals to understand what having a job means and what sort of job opportunities their might be, we offers the opportunity for people to sample different roles via a specific work experience placement with a host business. The support of a job coach is available to the person and the hosting business.
Kare's Supported Employment Model
An overview of the steps:
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Customer engagement
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Vocational profiling
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Employer engagement
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Job matching
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In-work support
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Career development
Project SEARCH
Project SEARCH is a one-year transition to work programme for young adults with a learning disability or autism spectrum conditions, or both.
It provides real work experience combined with training in employability and independent living skills delivered in a business setting to help young people make successful transitions to productive adult life.
The goal is to provide full-time paid work for our interns in an integrated setting.
Everyone deserves the right to aspire to the very best future, yet only 6.2% of people in Ireland with an intellectual disability go on to secure paid employment, compared to 80% of their peers. We want to change this.
This project runs each year from September. Interviews are held each April for the 10 places on the programme.
Our Project SEARCH partners
Project OWL
Project OWL enables young people with intellectual disability to gain meaningful work experience at the Houses of the Oireachtas through an applied learning, development and socialisation programme.
Each participant completes an immersive work experience incorporating QQI training in conjunction with the City of Dublin Education and Training Board.
Launched as a pilot programme by the Ceann Comhairle, Seán Ó Fearghaíl TD in September 2018, the Houses of the Oireachtas is the first parliament in the world to host a programme of this kind.
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It is facilitated by the Houses of the Oireachtas Service in collaboration with Kare and WALK as its sponsor organisations. The programme is also supported by the Adult Education Service run by the City of Dublin Education and Training Board and by the HSE.
The goal of Project OWL is to provide trainees with the skills, knowledge and ability to gain meaningful paid employment. It offers a unique opportunity to gain practical work experience and for trainees to be accredited for their learning over an 11-month period.
An application process commences each May and Kare service users can apply. Candidates will be asked to attend for interview for the project which is fulltime and based at the Houses of the Oireachtas in Dublin.
Our Project OWL Partners
