SP: Understand what is supported employment for PCDs – 03/17/2023 – Market

Earlier this month, the government of the state of São Paulo sanctioned Law No. 17,645/2023, which establishes the State Policy for Work with Support for People with Disabilities.

The law provides for mediation for the inclusion of people with disabilities in the labor market, promoting training according to their potential and helping employers in the inclusion process.

There is also provision for remuneration and benefits equal to those of people without disabilities who perform the same function.

According to Marcos da Costa, Secretary of the State Secretariat for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the law expands the legal basis for advancing employability and entrepreneurship programs such as the Assistive Employability Poles, which seek to support people with disabilities in their search for a job.

Among the services available are courses for training and assessing the skills of candidates, in addition to registering for vacancies and helping companies to identify the necessary adaptations to overcome barriers to the performance of people with disabilities.

People and companies can look for one of the state’s Inclusive Employability Centers and find more information on the website of the Meu Emprego Inclusivo program.

The sanction of the law occurs in a scenario of low employability of people with disabilities. Data from the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) for 2019 show that 7 out of 10 people with disabilities looking for a job were outside the labor market, and that the average salary was R$ 1,000 less than that of people without disabilities .

Thaís Dumêt Faria, technical officer on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work for Latin America and the Caribbean at the ILO (International Labor Organization), believes that the law is a great advance, including for promoting inclusive education.

“The State having approved this law and now having the obligation to implement it with other training and employment institutions is a very big advance, it demonstrates priority and opens up possibilities for people with disabilities who did not have access to education and professional training to be able to start this process”, declares the specialist.

Faria says that compared to the 17.2 million people with disabilities in Brazil, inclusion is still negligible: “It’s 8.4% of the population, so we have a very large number of workers with the potential to contribute to growth of the country and without having the conditions for it.”

For her, the prioritization of the theme by public policies is important: “There are many spheres that can and should work with the theme, also placing a priority on this support, because the Quota Law opens vacancies, but until you get there, it is a barrier very big, until you reach the door of the workplace and prepare yourself professionally for it and manage to overcome these barriers.”

How does the supported employment process work?

Flavia Maria da Silva, 35, is one of the beneficiaries of supported employment. In 2003, her parents sought out Apabex, a non-profit institution that was starting to offer mediation to assist their daughter, who has an intellectual disability.

Two professionals helped her along this journey, Alexandre Betti and Maria Fernanda Baptista Prezia, who tell how the experience began: “Alexander would go to Flávia’s house and with her to various places. He went to see the surroundings where she lived, and especially , getting to know Flávia, finding out about her potential and autonomy, what her main interests were, and we discovered that Flávia had a lot of potential, desires and dreams.”

Silva’s professional trajectory began in the administrative area, initially in the office of a grocery store and later in Early Childhood Education Centers in the Region. Soon, he began to help the teachers as a classroom assistant and felt the desire to study pedagogy, which he did in the following years.

“When I finished college, I wanted a job, and I couldn’t find it at all. Then Fernanda helped me”, reports Silva. This is the second phase of supported employment: job development, going through research and analysis of functions, cultures and availability of supports, resulting in a customized or existing vacancy that aims to benefit both the professional and the hirer.

In March 2022, Silva started working at his current job, at a school in the Santa Catarina Network that has an inclusion and diversity project. “Here we started, together with the school team, to create paths, because they didn’t have a specific vacancy for Flávia. In a meeting with the coordinators, we created a role for Flávia within the school. I think that’s the differential of supported employment, which is to create together”, says Prezia.

After being hired, the consultant accompanied Silva during the adaptation period. “I came every day to go riding, where she was doing better, where she needed support, then talking to the teachers, making adjustments.” That’s how, together with Silva and the company, the consultant designed her duties.

Today Silva works as a classroom assistant, accompanying 21 children aged between four and five years old: “I arrive, I’m going to help put things in order in the studio, I go upstairs with the children to the living room, I take them to the bathroom to drink water and I accompany her in class, for lunch, in the park and in extracurricular classes”, says the professional.

The route had some adaptations, such as no longer helping during the children’s rather hectic lunch hour. Co-workers also serve as support at times. “Flávia has this way of speaking more calmly and quietly, so we always partner with the teacher and the other assistant so that the children listen and understand that she can also ask for something, that they need to respond. It was more a challenge she faced and today…”, says Prezia, before Silva adds: “I did it! I’m facing more and more.”

Over time, Silva began to have more autonomy, contacting the consultant only when necessary. “Me and Fernanda are like a friendship relationship, because when I need help, I call her, to understand something, and she explains it to me”, he describes.

“She’s been here now for a year and I always say that she owns her nose. If she wants to change, she is free to speak”, concludes the consultant.

Methodology seeks equity for people with disabilities

According to Yvy Abbade, president of Anea (National Association of Supported Employment), the methodology aims to include commonly excluded people in the competitive job market, such as people with disabilities, with learning difficulties or certain health conditions.

“Everyone can have the opportunity to be included, only adaptations in society are needed for this to happen”, says Abbade. It is the supported employment consultant who identifies and mediates these adaptations in the professional environment.

“The consultant reports activities, directs, makes adaptations that make it possible for the person to be as productive as anyone else”, he says. “It’s a different model of doing inclusion, in which you look at the person’s potential, not their disability.”

The importance of relationships is also taken into account: “That’s why there is a relationship with family, company, manager, co-worker… It’s the power of support, what support each one of these can give.”

Still, the expert warns that supported employment cannot be confused with welfare: “On the contrary, we value the issue of clarity, productivity at work, in the performance of professionals with disabilities. We also understand that professionals need to be satisfied with the profession, with the function he will perform, because he is a professional who has his own interests and dreams”.

Companies receive support to adapt and create accessibility

The method also involves support for the work environment, accompanied by a technician, a qualified consultant, who works with the entire relationship network of the disabled person, inside and outside the company.

In this scenario, local supports are created, ways in which the work can be adapted so that the person develops it in a productive way. “There is apprehension, fear, lack of knowledge about how to deal with people with disabilities. We still have a great deal of difficulty in making the inclusion process happen, and especially in eliminating the capacitist view”, says Abbade.

I would point out that it is common for companies to start hiring people with disabilities due to the Quota Law, but continue to perceive the benefits for the work environment, such as greater collaboration and innovation.

“We’re talking about 8.4% of the population, that’s a lot. So companies also need to reflect within society outside, so that they can also communicate with everyone. Economically, this is something very positive”, the expert opines.

Internal inclusion policies are important for hiring

“We always say that the problem is not the disability that people have, but the social barriers, that structures and society are not made for the person who has a disability. So it is important that there is a policy to make the permanently accessible environment, and you don’t want to have a transformation because a person entered”, says Faria.

The idea is that environments are designed in a more accessible way, which sometimes involves simple changes, but which go unnoticed by many. “That’s why it’s also so important for people with disabilities to circulate and take care of society, as they are entitled to, because that’s the only way we can have the sensitivity of what to do so that the spaces are really adequate.”

The officer exemplifies the impact of changing high tables or water fountains for lower furniture or making the bathroom with a slightly larger door, so that they are more accessible for smaller people and wheelchair users.

But making environments more accessible goes beyond structural changes. “Undoubtedly it is important, but it is still a limited view that the site has a ramp and therefore is accessible. It is also, but not completely.”

More subtle and individualized changes can be implemented through supported employment: “That system and methodology also ends up supporting the workplace that wants to understand what accessibility means more broadly, because those without disabilities will obviously have more difficulty knowing which the questions.”