Overview and final conclusions of the Round Table 2022. – Employment of PWDs

The idea that effective communication is the foundation of all successful cooperation serves as our guiding concept. We held the second Round Table on the eve of the International Day of People with Disabilities because of this. The Round Table’s presentation this year established the custom of discussing socially significant subjects.

Our main goal is to educate people about the social model of disability. The social model places more emphasis on issues with the environment, the rehabilitation process, social and political conditions, and impediments than the medical model, which places the problem with the person with a handicap.

We can focus our efforts on training, normalization, inclusion, and participation, as well as on acquiring self-confidence and self-respect, self-determination, and self-representation by using a new strategy, or social model.

After describing the problems with the higher education system last year, we took it a step further and pondered what comes next.

After considering this query and conducting our OWN study, we came to the conclusion that there is a CATCH someplace; while there are obvious developments, all other options are left unexplored.

What’s the catch?!

We discussed a subject that is extremely dear to us in the association last year, namely higher education. All of the current Liberato board members are students, and Stipo Margić, the president, is a person with a disability. We had “first-hand” knowledge of what studying is like for PWDs, therefore we had to take action.

We made the decision to take specific activities and be the catalyst for social change after identifying the major challenges and restrictions that students with impairments confront. In light of this, we have implemented the following:

• We introduced new activities within the LiberatoTalk project (workshops, lectures on the topic of non-profit organizations and social entrepreneurship, communication with the target audience via social networks, round table, participation in conferences…)
• We have introduced a professional practice program within the Liberato association for students of the University Department of Professional Studies
• We have introduced a program for getting to know and learning technical skills, namely the LiberatoTech project (read more about LiberatoTech and other projects here.

The next step is employment, which comes after we have set a few foundations and taken steps to eliminate barriers. That is, the process of finding employment and developing a business mindset, which only higher education can prepare us for.

This year’s round table

The first section of the panel discussion focused on PWDs’ internal motivation, or the degree to which their knowledge, abilities, and character attributes could be used to advance business. Due to the complexity of the subject, we were forced to discuss the prejudices and prevailing attitudes that hinder the complete development of PWDs and have a detrimental impact on internal motivation.

The Split-Dalmatia County, the City of Split, the University of Split, and the University Department for Professional Studies—all of which are sponsors of the event with the European Parliament—kicked off the event with motivational words and a ton of support.

We defined three key components in employment: PWDs, mediators, and employers in order to organize the aforementioned “forest of data” and make it simpler to comprehend. It is impossible to thoroughly elaborate the subject and list all the significant barriers to employment as part of a gathering like the Round Table.

We would especially like to thank our speakers who, along with the assistance of the project collaborator and moderator Paula Marasović, allowed us to successfully address the topic and pointed the way to new, necessary actions and business ventures. The organization in the form of a panel discussion enabled us to concretely elaborate the problem and involve the participants in it.

They are respectively:

• Jerko Šarić, President of the Student Union, UNIST
• Maja Karaman Grbavac, adviser to the Office of the Ombudsperson for the Disabled
• Marina Vlajić, senior CPR consultant
• Ivan Bogdanović, head of the office for students with disabilities
• Denis Marijon, president of SUMSI
• Stipo Margić, organizer and president of the Liberato association

Part 1 of the panel discussion – PWD

Every 18th person with a disability works, according to Maja Karaman, an adviser to the Office of the Ombudsman for Disabled People. Stipo Margić and Ivan Bogdanović are two of them.

Stipo notes that when he started the Liberato organization and entered social entrepreneurship, he encountered some misconceptions regarding his abilities, but this time the major attention was not only on his impairment – but also on his age. Youth forces that desire, can, and will take action to address social issues are frequently underrated.

Ivan, on the other hand, makes the point that the issue is also related to how PWDs are portrayed in the media, which only has two options: PWDs who feel sorry for their impairments or PWDs who are superheroes and overcome any challenge. A social divide between PWDs and the rest of society is established exactly because of this media representation, which is utterly at odds with what is actually intended. It is not necessary to isolate PWDs from the rest of society on such a large scale.

Research demonstrating how PWDs are more responsible, motivated, and loyal workers than persons without disabilities was another significant topic covered during the Round Table.

Part 2 of the panel discussion – Intermediaries

The second round of the panel discussion focused on the acts that intermediaries implement (or do not implement). The Center for Professional Rehabilitation, the Office of the Ombudsperson, the SUMSI Association, the Liberato Association, the Office of the Ombudsperson for Students, and the Student Union are just a few of the many mediators in business development that are available.

The mediators were picked based on the speakers who were also the representatives of the institutions indicated.

Parent is the mediator whose speaker we lacked and who really stood out in our talk.

There is a group that works with PWDs far earlier than all others, in addition to institutions, organizations, associations, and alliances that facilitate PWD employment through education or particular ties with companies. Those are parents.

We will discuss this topic separately in future posts, and until then we would like to explain it briefly.

Parents can frequently, unintentionally, and with the best of intentions, have a detrimental impact on PWDs’ motivation from a young age. In this sense, blame is not placed on the parent but rather on a system that does not offer parents tangible support, including psychological support.

Our research indicates that CPRZ’s services are not sufficiently widely advertised to the general population, as shown by the following:

• 4 out of 10 employers who employ PWDs use subsidies for their employment
• 6 out of 10 employers do not know anything about CPRZ services
• 2 out of 10 employers know only roughly what the CPRZ does
• 2 out of 10 employers know almost everything or everything about CPRZ services

We came to the realization that the problem is not inherent in the CPRZ itself, but rather in the socially under-explained competency in the hiring process and the “forest of data” that we previously described. This realization was made possible with the assistance of the other guests at this point.

On the other side, the university underinvests in professional staff that has the necessary training to work with PWDs’ various demands. The number of students with disabilities enrolling has consistently ranged between 40 and 50, but this number is rising when you take into account the fact that some persons do not wish to identify as impaired, in part due to societal stigma. Jerko Šarić,” the president of the student union, draws attention to the departments’ lack of psychological support, which is essential for all students to deal with stress, anxiety, and occasionally depression.

The SUMSI Association and its affiliate Liberato Association are involved in the job sector, and their projects and initiatives are designed to specifically link PWDs with entrepreneurs and develop their skills. The initiatives put into place in this regard are focused, goal-oriented, and agents of social change. The importance of these projects will be outlined in later blog articles.

Part 3 of the panel discussion – Employers

The integration of PWDs into the workforce was one of the topics we covered in this section of the conversation. It was determined that in order to achieve successful integration, parents must be involved, the educational system must be improved, and biases in the community, particularly those relating to the competences themselves, must be actively dismantled.

The level of remuneration that a person with a handicap should earn for the same sort of job as compared to a person without a disability was the subject of our study, in which 100 students and working persons (potential and existing working environment) participated.

The employment situation is improving over the years, but the critical part is the public sector.

The main obstacles detected by the surveyed employers are:

• Costs of adaptation and reorganization of the workplace for the needs of the disabled
• Lack of PWD experience
• Prejudices (about competencies and within the work team)
• Time gap between employment and receiving incentives

And finally, information that we consider to be extremely important and little known – the work efficiency assessment service (on the basis of which the right to incentives is realized) performed by CPRZ – is completely FREE!