YMCA supports accessible employment pathway

YMCA South Australia has been awarded a Federal Government grant of $110,000 to facilitate better employment pathways for people living with a disability.

The funding has been made available through the Australian Government’s Information, Linkages and Capacity Building (ILC) program and is focussed on economic participation.

The successful grant application highlighted the YMCA Employment Scaffold (YES) that centres on challenging current YMCA recruitment and training methods to build employment opportunities for people with disability.

YMCA Community Strengthening Area Manager, Marion Modra, said the grant would enable the organisation to action the YES project and provide real and positive employment outcomes for a section of the community that was often overlooked.

“The YES project aims to remove barriers and design innovative recruitment and training procedures so that people with disability can access jobs that would previously be unobtainable. We will apply evidence-based research that indicates maintaining a job is successful where people had practical help with tasks and supportive relationships in the workplace,” she said.

“Our YMCA Leap program has been developed to support people with disability and we will expand on this for those people who have employment goals.”

The YES project will target 12 people between the ages of 15 and 30 with intellectual disabilities from across South Australia who want to pursue open employment.

“We will recruit an experienced employment leader and include two volunteers with disability to guide the development of recruitment and delivery of training processes for specific roles,” said Ms Modra.

“This will provide an opportunity to influence change from a lived experience. Over the next 12 months we will target 12 jobs across South Australia where the YMCA provides services and work to fill these positions through YES. Eventually I envisage we would be able to offer the package to YMCAs across the country together with other like-minded organisations.”

For more information on the ILC Program visit www.ndis.gov.au/communities/ilc-home or to find out more about YMCA South Australia programs and services www.sa.ymca.org.au.