Navigating the Waters Project: Enhancing Employability of Persons with Disabilities

3. Navigating the Waters Project: Enhancing Employability of Persons with Disabilities

Sector: Employment/Labor

Goal(s):

Technical and functional independence and environmental awareness

KIPA Focus:

Access, knowledge, and participation

Country: Canada Participating Agencies: Canadian Association of Independent Living Centres

(CAILC) and 22 partner IL centers

Beneficiaries:

All people with disabilities

13. Background: Navigating the Waters has been a national employment project in Canada since 1997. The Opportunities Fund, Human Resources Development Canada, funds this project. During 2001–02, 22 of the 25 independent living resource centers (IL centers) in Canada implemented Navigating the Waters across Canada. Each center had a career development facilitator. The facilitators work with individual consumers to support people to develop career plans, help identify appropriate resources, and link them with employment training and job opportunities. CAILC started in 1985 as a national umbrella organization to provide support and training to the IL centers, which are autonomous, community-based, nonprofit, registered charitable organizations, with volunteer boards of directors. They are run by and for people with disabilities. Core activities include information and referral, peer support, skills training/individual advocacy, and research and development/special projects. The IL philosophy promotes choice and empowering people with disabilities to be actively involved in the decision- making process in all aspects of their lives. It encourages people with disabilities to take risks and be integrated into mainstream society with the supports needed to lead independent lives. Funding of IL centers is based on private fund raising, foundation grants, and donations from members. The main support to the operating budget is from government funding at the federal, provincial, and municipal level.

14. Goal: The overall goal is to assist people with disabilities to access the employment market toward community integration and economic independence. In the 2001–02 project, the objective was to support people with disabilities— mental health (197, 25%), hearing (42, 5%) agility (133,16%), visual (37, 5%), speaking (1), intellectual (98,12%), motor skills (79, 10%), learning (68, 9%), and other (149,18%)—in the database to identify employment interests and opportunities and training requirements, and to obtain employment.

15. Strategies: Each program is developed differently in each center but has the following common elements.

Appendix 7 93

(i) Working with people with a broad range of disabilities and with multiple disabilities, often those for whom there are few services in the community or with whom service providers do not know where to start.

(ii) Building networks by connecting with other employment-related agencies and placement programs, as well as employers and other local groups; conducting outreach to remote communities, in job fairs, and by making presentations in the local schools and to other groups. These include multicultural groups, women’s organizations, mental health organizations, and school boards.

(iii) Forming partnerships by establishing formal agreements with other community organizations, government agencies, and other agencies to work together and create more access to resources.

(iv) Working one-on-one with consumers where they are located, and guiding and supporting, rather than leading and providing, to the extent needed, building trust with the consumer, spending quality time, listening, and helping plan.

(v) Providing and sharing information, making referrals, and organizing, including setting up volunteer placement programs.

(vi) Providing infrastructure for support, information, meetings, and building relationships.

(vii) Skills training, public relations, workshops, mock interviews, and preparing employment proposals.

16. Output: Of the 827 persons, 27% were employed; 35 were involved in volunteering, 76 participated in skills/education, and 9 received work experience; some 27% have established a long journey program—they have identified the need for more long-term support and development before employment can be considered.

17. Results: Access to employment is the major outcome of this project. Since 1997, more than 3,550 people with disabilities have been supported to secure employment or to improve their employability as a result of project interventions. Knowledge development and Participation are the other two outcomes— building the capacity and confidence of people with disabilities to identify skills and opportunities and to seek employment with the support of the facilitator.