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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-07-31 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

Disability Employment

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (15:08): As we know in this place, the dignity that employment provides individuals cannot be underestimated. It is important that people have an opportunity to work. Work provides a whole range of opportunities, not only to gain independence but also to learn new skills and the importance of socialisation within the community. This is just as true for people living with disability. Often in the past, people living with disability have been denied the opportunity to find meaningful work—and I do stress 'meaningful'.

Meaningful work is very important for young people, for people living with disability and for their families because they are keen for their young people to gain independence. It is also important for their families to know that, once they are not around anymore, their child can actually look after themselves and provide for themselves. That is very important.

It is also unfortunately a fact that in this country we have one of the lowest work participation rates in the world for people living with disability. It is way below our comparative countries. It is important that we understand that and do something to address it. There are a whole range of attitudes that we need to change in terms of people with disability being able to work—family attitudes and also employer attitudes. Also, at a fundamental level, we need to make sure that people living with a disability have the skills and abilities to actually gain meaningful work.

I am very pleased to advise this chamber that last week I attended a disability hospitality enterprise pilot project graduation ceremony. This project involved a range of young people who engaged in a project to gain skills. Before I describe the project, I would like to mention that in African culture it is often said that it takes a community to educate a child. That is the premise of this project.

A range of partners included the City of Playford—and I would like to particularly acknowledge Cyndi Neuzerling, an advocate in the council—Uniting SA and Cherie Jolly, the advocate there; Barkuma; and also the Independent Institute of Food Processing, operated by the Knoll family. And yes, they are related to the Knoll family of this place, in particular Thomas Knoll, who was actually the trainer in this program and who, I am told by the project leaders, provided way beyond the contract requirements for this project.

The participants in this program came mainly from the City of Playford area. The program came about from a discussion I had with Dermot Cussen, the Director of the Stretton Centre, a unit within the City of Playford. We were talking about employment programs. In fact, one of the employment and training programs we talked about the former minister for education was involved in launching at the Stretton Centre when she was minister. Again, this involved young people. Mr Cussen said that his council would be interested in partnering up to provide a program for young people living with disability to gain skills and abilities and also to gain those skills and abilities in a live situation, actually working in some sort of hospitality environment.

One other partner I should mention is the former department of state development, which provided the funding under the previous government. I acknowledge that that funding was continued by this current government through the Department for Innovation and Skills. The project was about giving the City of Playford, as an NDIS supporter, the capacity to undertake programs to build the skills and abilities in young people in our community, and in particular young people living with disability. The project was a hospitality enterprise, staffed by people living with disability, who undertook a tailored and concurrent hospitality training program established at Coventry Road, Smithfield Plains.

The comprehensive training program covered all aspects of retail food service, such as logistics, sourcing and ordering supplies, food preparation, marketing, product costing, budgeting and all front-of-house retail and customer service activities. A very important part of the program was to put those young people in a live environment where they could gain skills and also the confidence to undertake those tasks and show future employers that they could actually do this work in a live environment.

The training program was delivered in a fully functioning commercial hospitality environment provided by the independent institute, providing real-life experience in the operations of a commercial kitchen and all associated aspects of a hospitality business, including back and front-of-house activities. The aim of the program was to ensure that participants had sufficient training and work experience to be able to work in hospitality roles of their choice within supported or, more importantly, open employment environments.

It was a very successful program. I commend all the partners. This is an example of government and non-government sectors working together to improve the lives of people living with disability.

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