A Pathway to Employment: “They’re made to believe that they don’t have worth.”

Employment can single handedly create a major improvement on well-being by pulling people out of poverty and providing a sense of fulfilment. This is part two of my sensory journey across the field of employment equity. In this section I write about what I learnt about Best Buddies (BBIL) and social integration for people with intellectual disabilities.

Part 1: A Pathway to Employment: The Sensory Journey

Part 2: They’re made to believe they don’t have worth

Part 3: Well, racism definitely plays a part

Part 4: Until every working woman is given her due.

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I was just getting used to the changes brought on by the NDIS when I had to get on a plane to move to the United States of America.

America and Australia, I find, have their differences. For two western countries that speak the same language, I often find myself misunderstood when I speak English, and I find myself not understanding when sign language is in use. I am no good at Auslan, but I can guarantee that I am even worse with ASL.

The differences across the state lines are just as stark. The only visible disability I saw as a tourist in Los Angeles was within the midst of the masses of homeless tents. Diversity of every kind except ability was publicly celebrated in New York. In Evanston, Illinois, I was relieved to see people with disabilities working in the supermarkets and strolling the streets. As an immigrant with a disability, I didn’t have to face homelessness and enforced solitude as my only options.

I’ve made a new friend who has the same kind of hearing impairment as I do. She tells me that Evanston is a bastion of liberalness, and that the rest of Chicagoland, a city that adores the Obamas, is not quite as inclusive.

In many ways, accessibility is not supported as well as it could be. There’s evidence of compliance with the ADA, like button operated doors, but legislated requirements are just the bare minimum. The CTA is only occasionally physically accessible and mostly just confusing to navigate, and the Metra is just impossible. Other people I have spoken to have said that disability support in Illinois is not as good as other states in America.

I’ve recently started the job hunt, and some things are the same. Most application forms have asked me to declare if I have a disability and have provided a statement around reasonable accommodation.

But the conversation around disability employment is also slightly different because the baseline employment conditions are worse. Illinois is an at will employment state, which means that employers can fire you for any reason (except for protected categories). The minimum wage is half that of Australia’s. Paid time off and paid sick time is not required by law. Already problematic for people in more privileged positions, these employment conditions exacerbate matters for people who have carer responsibilities, doctor’s appointments or a need for mental health days.

The unemployment rate for the 53 million Americans with a disability is nearly twice that of the broader population. Right now, 81% of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) are unemployed. The numbers are no better in Australia. Clearly, there’s something more than employment law that is driving these numbers.

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“Best Buddies International is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to establishing a global volunteer movement that creates opportunities for one-to-one friendships, integrated employment, leadership development, and inclusive living for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD).”

Best Buddies International mission statement

On the face level, Best Buddies Illinois (BBIL) works to support people with intellectual disabilities to find friends and jobs. They have multiple programs focused around friendship, employment and leadership skills. However, the staff at BBIL go beyond the mission statement. On a deeper level, Best Buddies gives a group of people who have been disenfranchised from society a pathway back in. “Giving a voice to people who don’t have it yet.”

I encountered Best Buddies through Chicago Ideas Week. Before this, I had never had a meaningful interaction with someone with an intellectual disability despite spending so much time in the disability advocacy space I was aware that this was a huge personal gap, so I bought a ticket to their workshop. The workshop was structured as a training session for the BBIL participants to practice their networking and interview skills. Along with the other ticket holders, I was asked to pose as the interview panel and provide feedback on the participants’ performance. It wasn’t what I was initially expecting. I thought there would be more of a focus on teaching us, the ticket holders, rather than putting us in a semi-teaching role. It was surprising, but I think it was also an effective way of putting me in a position of genuinely interacting with people with intellectual disabilities in an employment context, and thinking about their value as employees.

It made me curious enough to want to learn more about Best Buddies. On one Tuesday in December, I popped into the offices of Best Buddies Illinois, and asked if I could have a few conversations. Over the course of a morning, I spoke to a few staff members to learn more about their mission.

Going in, I was afraid of immersing myself in an organisation that was inclusive in name, but paternalistic in action. There is a risk, when working with people with intellectual disabilities, or with anyone that is somewhat “different”, of stereotyping other people’s abilities and assuming that we know better. While in the hiring space, I have encountered disability employment organisations that defined their clients by their disabilities and told me nothing about their abilities. There is also a risk of thinking that inclusion is someone else’s business, even for organisations in the business of inclusion, and neglecting to hire people with disabilities. I was pleased to meet an organisation full of staff members that had a personal connection to the disability space, were genuinely friends with people with intellectual disabilities, and also themselves had intellectual disabilities.

The biggest challenge that the staff at Best Buddies Illinois faces is proving to people why inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities matters. Finding jobs and friendship is a challenge that all adults face in varying levels, but adults with IDD face the additional hurdle of overcoming the stigma around intellectual disability and fighting to be treated as they deserve.

Cultural shifts are like moving mountains, one rock at a time. It’s not enough to rewrite a policy or two, or to enact a new law. For a culture to morph, and for heavily ingrained, unconscious stereotypes to be dispelled, countless minds and hearts need to be changed one by one.

The stereotypes around IDD in western culture don’t always come from a bad place, but they do end up creating a damaging environment. As one staff member put it, people with IDD are people who have worth, but are made to believe that they don’t. Hiring managers and executives may like the sound of inclusive hiring, but instinctively think of the challenges and barriers inherent within their own company. Parents of people with IDD love their children, but aren’t always aware of their children’s abilities and desires outside of the family unit.

Society doesn’t have enough exposure to people with disability. I don’t mean “positive” exposure in the form of inspiration porn. I mean exposure in everyday situations, where people with disabilities are just other people on the street, in the classroom, in the workplace. The result is that society is afraid of people with disabilities because they are too different. It is easy to cartoonify a person with a disability and create boundaries around their character.

On the other hand, there are quite a few cultures where “face” and the image of the cohesive whole is all important, and where disability, and differences in all forms, are actively stigmatised. I had a conversational detour with one person, where I posited my theories around cultural inertia in immigrants. My grandparents migrated from China to Vietnam, and my parents escaped from the Vietnam War to Australia. They made sure to raise me speaking Chinese and Vietnamese, and with strict adherence to south east Asian cultural values. When I visited Vietnam, I was surprised to find that my cousins only spoke Vietnamese and had not been taught Chinese at all. I wonder if the trauma of moving to a country with a foreign culture forced my parents to withdraw into their own traditions and derive comfort from practicing what was familiar. I wonder if feeling isolated can prevent immigrants from evolving at the same rate as those who feel comfortable about the position of their culture in society.

At best, the lack of disability inclusion in society leads to fear and apprehension when hiring and befriending people with disabilities. But so very often it leads to outright ableism and intentional exclusion. The staff at Best Buddies recounted painful instances of being told, “you’re being too sensitive” when confronting rudeness and insensitivity. It speaks for the state of the conversation when the President of the United States makes fun of a person with a disability and receives no significant consequences.

It makes those small pictures of inclusion, like the cashier with a disability working the till at Wholefoods, seem like such a wonderful moment in comparison. It’s such a mundane thing, to see someone doing their job, but unfortunately such a unique thing.

BBIL aims to go out of business one day. For this to happen, inclusion needs to be a natural part of society. Society needs to treat all people with humility and acceptance, without BBIL’s intervention. As one staff member said, “I want people to know what they’re worth.”

“I want people to know what they’re worth.”

Getting there will rely on so many things, from the continued growth of BBIL’s programs, to sustained funding and enthusiastic volunteers. For BBIL’s staff, this change will only happen if we make space for people to step into the light and tell their own stories in their own way. This means people with IDD speaking out from their own perspectives to explain why inclusion matters. It means program participants sharing their personal change in mindset from paternalism to recognising their own innocence. Participants start out by thinking that they are doing people with disabilities a favour by giving the program a chance. They come out the other end realising that they have learnt more than they have taught. It means inclusive companies shifting the conversation around inclusive employment from good marketing sense (“the ethical thing to do”) to good business sense (“the profitable thing to do”).

BBIL is already vocal about disability inclusion, but they are only one organisation pushing back against an entire state.

Here is one story that was shared with me. Central Park Zoo hires greeters to say hello to people coming through the gates, count the number of visitors and ask for donations. A few months after hiring a person with IDD through Best Buddies, the Zoo found that their new hire had higher numbers than every other greeter. After tracking the performance of their greeters, the Zoo found that their BB hire had higher visitor count numbers simply because he was paying better attention, and he had 150% higher donation levels because he was more confident about asking for donations.

The risk with only sharing one story is that readers will assume that Central Park Zoo had success because people with IDD are always “happy” and “sociable” and that greeters (and baggers and shelf stockers) are perfect jobs for people with IDD. It creates more stereotypes. Like inspiration porn, it makes people on social media feel accomplished and charitable without making steps towards actual inclusion in society.

Central Park Zoo did not have success with their new greeters because they hired people with IDD. They had success because they hired the best people for the job, people who had the skills and personalities suited to the role. They could have blindly hired someone else with IDD, and they could have had a terrible experience because that person hated being sociable and had no numerical skills.

One corporate story is not enough. We need to hear stories about how the law firm that hired a BBIL participant as an Information Technology Assistant ended up with more effective usage of technology in their offices. We need to hear about how Amazon’s warehouse workers with IDD have higher quality of work and attendance and a near perfect safety record. We need to meet the lab technician who happens to have an intellectual disability. The narrative needs to be about the diversity in experiences, hiring strategies and policies.

People with disabilities are not a one dimensional other. People with disabilities are diverse, just like everyone else, and they too want jobs.

Want to know more about disability employment?

• Learn more about how you can be part of the change with Best Buddies.

• Read the Institute for Corporate Productivity’s report into why employing people with disabilities makes good business sense.

• Learn more about what people with disabilities are doing to improve the state of disability employment in the Victorian Public Service.