The BBC 3 viewers among you may have been, like me, glued to recent reality show 'Britain's Missing Top Model'. A competition to pick a disabled model to take on the fashion world while acting as a role model and disability champion, it has been compulsive, if not always comfortable, viewing.
While actually making the programme raised all sorts of questions, with one side arguing that the girls were being exploited and the other insisting that they were being patronised, it served to highlight - incredibly starkly - the difficulties faced by disabled people who want a career.
Modelling is of course an extreme example of a career, but there's no denying that the problems exist.
According to the UK's Office for National Statistics' 2006 Labour Force Survey:
- Nearly one in five people of working age (6.9 million, or 19%) in Great Britain are disabled
- Only about half of disabled people of working age are in work (50%), compared with 80% of non disabled people of working age
- Almost half (45%) of the disabled population of working age in Britain are economically inactive i.e. outside of the labour force. Only 16% of non-disabled people of working age are economically inactive
- There are currently 1.2 million disabled people in the UK who are available for and want to work.
- Employment rates vary greatly according to the type of impairment a person has. Disabled people with mental health problems have the lowest employment rates of all impairment categories at only 21%. The employment rate for people with learning disabilities is 26%.
- Disabled people are more than twice as likely as non-disabled people to have no qualifications (26% as opposed to 10%)
- The average gross hourly pay for disabled employees is £10.31 compared to £11.39 for non disabled employees.
So what are employers doing to attract and retain disabled candidates without making them think that they've been hired to meet a quota?
