Supported Employment consists of a set of services and actions focused on the person, mainly individualized, so that the person with disabilities and with special difficulties can access, maintain and promote themselves in an ordinary company in the open labor market, with the support of professionals and other types of supports.

We understand people with special difficulties, those who need continuous, punctual or intermittent support in the development of their work, the intensity and duration of these services being necessary for the maintenance of the workplace and ensuring a follow-up that guarantees the continuity and promotion of the worker.

Goals

  1. To obtain for the disabled person a place of work integrated in the ordinary market.
  2. Promote the social insertion of people with disabilities through the completion of a job, as a means for the full incorporation of the individual in the community.
  3. Improve the quality of life and the independence and autonomy of people with disabilities.
  4. Enable the personal and work promotion of people with disabilities in the community and the company.

Supported Employment is based on an individualized support system, consisting of the provision of essential assistance provided to the person so that they can develop a work activity for themselves, at a given moment in their life trajectory.

Actions

Supported employment facilitates the labor insertion process with the following actions:

  1. Dissemination of the program in a broad sense (Public Guidance Network, general population, educational entities, companies, social services, social agents, etc.) in order to publicize Supported Employment and facilitate access for people with disabilities.
  2. Prospecting workplaces through the dissemination of the program to the business world.
  3. Individualized attention throughout the process, based on a personal work plan that is based on the decisions made by the person with disabilities.
  4. Guidance and employment advice and / or personnel to the person with disability and, if the case, to his family.
  5. Technical and legal advice to the different agents of the employing entity, on issues related to types of contracts, hiring assistance and other administrative aspects, as well as support in relational aspects towards the person with disability.
  6. Accompaniment and training in the same job, as well as in other natural situations considered in the personal work plan.
  7. Advice on workplace adaptations and ergonomic aids.
  8. Search for natural supports of the work and social environment, for the attainment and maintenance of insertion objectives.

Phases

The work process is developed through the following phases, which may include one or more of the above actions:

  1. Preparation for incorporation into the labor market: preparation of the candidate’s professional profile, information and career guidance of candidates in relation to job search, attitudes and work skills, knowledge of organizations, basic health and safety standards, labor regulations and network of community services.
  2. Search for personalized work and active search for work, ensuring an appropriate job to each person through the dissemination of the program, the prospecting of the labor market, advice and stimulation to the company, the analysis of jobs and working conditions and the compatibility analysis between candidate and place of work.
  3. Adaptation and on-the-job training for the acquisition of technical aspects and the relational and complete integration in the company, with search for natural support and the progressive withdrawal of the work preparer as the process becomes effective.
  4. Monitoring for the maintenance of the workplace, improvement of working conditions and promotion, in a sense of preventive and anticipatory assessment of the needs of the worker with disability and the employing entity, as well as detection of conflict situations and the application of measures corrective
  5. Autonomy of the person inserts labor: the process of Supported Employment ends when the work autonomy of the person with disability is achieved, through a positive or high output of the program. This exit will occur as long as there are no incidents during a previously determined period of time and there is an explicit agreement between the program, the company, the worker with disability and, if it is the case, his family.

Brief history of supported employment

Little by little, combining theory and practice, Employment with Support was configured as an effective system of accompaniment in the labor insertion, which made possible the participation in society of citizens with significant disabilities, without their required level of Support was a cause of exclusion for anyone.

Initially, this methodology began to be experimented in some American universities and it represented a substantial change in the conception of care and / or rehabilitation services for people with severe disabilities, subsequently extending to other countries and to other types of disabilities.