Opening Statement – Mr. Joe Mason, CEO, WALK
I want to thank the committee for the invitation to discuss the issues of access and progression for
young people with disabilities in relation to further education, training and employment. My name is
Joe Mason and I am the CEO of WALK. WALK is an innovative, forward thinking organisation that is
renowned for leading change within the community and voluntary sector and is highly recognised
for its commitment to the provision of superior quality services. I am joined today by my colleagues
Des Henry, our Walkways Project Coordinator and Gráinne Berrill, our WALK PEER Programme
Coordinator in Louth.
To begin, I’d like to read an article by Noelin Fox who is a Ph.D candidate at the Centre for Disability
Law and Policy in NUI Galway. Her research examines the right to independent living provided for in
Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Noelin has worked for
many years in intellectual disability services’ in Ireland.
“This month, my daughter, like thousands of her peers across the country, is moving away from
home for the first time. She is 18 years old and is taking up her place in college, embarking on her
journey to independence. Over the coming months she will have to learn a whole array of new skills
which she has no previous experience of. She will have to manage her (limited) budget, feed herself
properly, learn to live with people who are not her immediate family, manage the academic work
she is assigned, deal with the bank, figure out bus time-tables, forge new friendships and a whole
array of other tasks. In the process she may well make mistakes. She may submit work late for
college, spend too much money on going out leaving herself short at the end of the week, and get
involved in unwise relationships, among many things. Hopefully she will learn from such mistakes
and manage better the next time. Throughout this process she will have plenty of support – from us
her parents, from the school-friends she is living with and from new friends – and if she gets her
heart broken or bruised we will take care of her until she heals and help to her move on. The college
too is well attuned to the needs of in-coming first years – it has good structures in place to ease
them into college life and help ensure they progress through their first encounters with third level
academic studies.
How different all this would all be if she had a disability, especially if she had an intellectual
disability. Would she be leaving home at all at this stage of her life? Probably not – and there are
many reasons why this is so. On a practical level she may not be allowed to open a bank account or
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sign a lease for her accommodation. If she were deemed by a medical doctor to be unable to
manage her money, any disability benefits she received would probably be paid directly to us.
And where would she go anyway? There are so few mainstream third level education options open
to people with intellectual disability. Third level colleges may have disability support services for
students, but gaining access to the regular courses is a problem and there are few courses designed
to meet the needs of people with intellectual disability in this sector.
On another level we may feel that she would be safer at home, worried that she would not be able
to cope with life without our immediate support and guidance – would she be vulnerable to being
exploited, would she be able to manage getting the bus, would she get involved in inappropriate
relationships, would she manage her course work? And if she needed support at home where would
this come from and how would it be paid for?
Our systems and structures are designed to support my daughter’s progress from home to college
and on to employment. The pathways are clear and open. It is assumed by her family, her schools
and her community that she will learn the skills she needs to progress through the systems and
become a fully-fledged independent adult. These positive assumptions about her abilities are built
into and supported by our structures and systems. For people with intellectual disability the
opposite is the case. Quite apart from the worries of parents’ about the ability of their disabled sons
or daughters to manage life independently, the lack of clear pathways is an enormous obstacle. For
young adults with intellectual disabilities the most likely route after school is some form of training
or day services provided by a disability service provider and funded by the health services – not
education. Although FAS or Solas funds some training programmes for people with disabilities, the
vast bulk of day services and training for people with intellectual disability is funded from the health
budget. So, while our educational obligations to most young adults continues into their twenties, it
seems to end at eighteen for those with intellectual disability. This means that if a young adult with
intellectual disability does not want to attend a specialist (and in effect a segregated) post-school
education or training programme, they will in general have to forge a path largely unassisted by our
state systems – which in the main only provides recognised pathways to specialist/segregated
services for them.”
Noelin goes on to discuss how a sea-change in attitude is needed, away from paternalism and
protection – which has served people badly – to one of inclusiveness and expectation and how we
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must develop recognised and accessible pathways to independence for people with intellectual
disability, which are not separate from those of their peers.
A number of years ago we asked the people using our services what they wanted out of life. Having a
job was at the top of the list of dreams. Therefore WALK needed to support them to make
employment a real and tangible goal. But we were not set up to meet those needs at the time. Many
of the people we were supporting had come from institutions, had problems with challenging
behaviour and had very complex needs. Employment had never been an option for them up to this
point. We set about finding ways to support them to achieve their employment goals and our
research found that the generic and disability-focused employment supports that exist in Ireland
were firstly unavailable to them and secondly that they did not meet needs of this group anyway.
So we looked at finding a better way ourselves and went to Europe to get support. We partnered
with a like-minded organisation in North Wales, called Agoriad CYF and successfully applied to the
Ireland Wales Programme, INTERREG 4A to co-fund the development and piloting of person-centred
programmes which would address the issues. Through this partnership we piloted two individualised
employment support programmes called

REAL which stand for Reaching Employment Ambitions in Life, aimed at supporting our
older Service Users to gain and maintain paid employment for the first time in their lives and

PEER which stands for Providing Equal Employment Routes, aimed at ending the prospect
of any young person with an intellectual disability going through life without ever having the
opportunity to have a job and contribute to their community and society.
The Ireland Wales Programme funding has enabled us to advance and pilot a PEER methodology of
providing supported progression routes for people with disabilities, which has proven to be very
successful. Through the work of the INTERREG project it became increasingly clear that the vast
majority of young people with disabilities are removed from the employment market at a very early
stage, whether they are transitioning out of mainstream schools, special education or rehabilitative
training programmes. It is also clear that we need to catch people at a young age and prevent their
need for expensive, intensive services later in life; to facilitate them in learning the skills required to
be fully included participants in their communities. It is like the old Irish saying 'Is tús maith leath na
hoibre." – ‘A good start is half the work’; If we believe that then we must also believe that no start
means no work.
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As noted in our submission document it is difficult to obtain data around progression rates for young
people with disabilities but what we do know is that despite the vast amount of legislation, policies
and investment in place, people with disabilities have much lower rates or labour market
participation than their non-disabled peers. We also see on-the ground evidence of the limited
options and opportunities for young people leaving our education system.
In 2012 the Department of Social Protection secured funding from the European Social Fund for the
Disability Activation Project (DACT). A key goal of DACT is to provide learning to DSP on how best to
ensure people with disabilities are enabled to avail of progression, education and development
opportunities. We successfully applied for funding under strand 2 of DACT, “Progression
Programmes for Young People” to deliver the WALK PEER model to 16-24 year olds in county Louth.
This funding enables us to roll out the PEER methodology of developing routes to employment for
young people with a broader spectrum of disability, on an individualised basis and through the
engagement of the broader community with the more natural support of PEER Mentors.
Designing our employment progammes has sharpened our focus on the gaps in provision of support
for young people with disabilities;

Almost 20% of people with disabilities finish school with primary education or less

One third don’t complete secondary education

The majority of young people with intellectual disabilities progress to HSE funded
“rehabilitative training” programmes which do not have vocational training as a primary goal
and often don’t support the actual needs of the participants.
This is what leads to low engagement with the labour market. People with disabilities are half as
likely to be in employment as their non-disabled peers; 85% of people with an intellectual disability
are unemployed. If we don’t give people a start early in life, then they are not getting a start at all!
Rather than creating a climate of inclusiveness and expectation we have created one of segregation
and low expectations, or no expectations at all.
We must have a variety of options available to young people with disabilities which will ensure that
they have genuinely equal employment routes as their peers that will facilitate them in becoming
fully included, contributing members of our society. As evidenced by the case studies in our
submission, very often individualised interventions, which have proven to be very successful, are not
complex or costly. The long-term benefits and savings resulting from the provision of appropriate
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supports will not be insignificant. There will, at the very least, be an identifiable return on the €1.3
billion per year that we are currently investing in SEN supports.
We are asking that the members here today not let the need for suitable opportunities for these
young people to slip off the agenda. At the moment, as requested by Minister of State Kathleen
Lynch, the National Disability Authority is developing a comprehensive employment strategy for
people with disabilities. This is not solely an issue for the Department of Health as these young
people are not “sick”. They require some extra individualised supports to successfully progress from
education to adulthood, with a view to have a full, meaningful and contributing life.
The DACT project concludes in early 2015 and the government’s “Action Plan for Jobs 2014” section
5 on Pathways to Work and the Youth Guarantee commits to having the Comprehensive Strategy on
Employment for people with Disabilities signed off by the end of 2014. Therefore there is a challenge
for the Department of Social Protection and the Department of Education and Skills to ensure that
this issue of activation delivers real and tangible options for our young citizens from 2015 on.
We ask the members of the committee to ensure that the Youth Guarantee delivers for all our young
people equally and that the work being done to develop the comprehensive strategy to activate our
young citizens with disabilities is implemented in full without delay. I will conclude by saying again
“Is tús maith leath na hoibre." Let’s give these young people a good start.
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