Published on 12, July, 2020
Could we have more information from NAS about David Cameron's Disability Confident initiative launched in July, and how NAS is getting involved?
Part of this is about trying to persuade employers to recruit disabled people. That's something we need to explore on this discussion forum.
They are using poster like "Great Minds Think Differently" and "Unlock Potential" - just I must be looking in all the wrong places for them.
The section on making reasoonable adjustments is frankly scary. Offer a blind person a glass of water.
There's a "Hidden Impairment Toolkit" that includes autism and asperger's syndrome, produced by HING Hidden Impairment National Group. This is the organisation set up to guide the Department of Work and Pensions in understanding disabled needes during the re-assessment of pension eligibility.
So no guesses for how reliable HING's toolkit is going to be. Why isn't NAS providiong a toolkit - unless the best NAS could offer was the Triad of Impairments....
But otherwise autism isn't mentioned.
Is there something we should be told?
Hi Longman,
I passed on your original comment to our policy team who've responded with.
"The NAS is a member of the Hidden Impairments National Group (HING) and commented on the toolkit. On the whole we believe it is a good resource. However, more needs to be done to ensure that Jobcentre Plus staff and others tasked with providing advice and support for people with autism in seeking and maintaining employment have appropriate training. More also needs to be done to make employers more aware of the condition, alongside the disability confident campaign. We met last week with the Department of Work and Pensions to discuss plans for the new disability employment strategy. It was a positive meeting and they are keen to ensure the needs of people with autism are included in the the strategy. We have offered to facilitate a focus group with people with autism and family members to help inform the strategy and we can let you know when that is happening, although places will be limited. The DWP are also working with the Department of Health on the review of the adult autism strategy. The results of the 'engagement exercise' for the review - this was a series of focus groups, seminars and a survey - will be published in early December. The reviewed strategy will be published in March. We expect the results of the 'engagement exercise' to have some focus on employment and we will share that once it is available."