Welcome to Martin's blog

The trouble with inclusion It’s not often that I go to Australian Mining for either news or inspiration. But an article appearing in Link’s weekly digest caught my eye with the headline: Mining companies target employees with a disability to increase diversity, Hays (9/10/17). According to Hays’ latest analysis on recruitment trends, mining companies are pursuing potential employees who have a disability as a new method for increasing workforce diversity. In this industry, the diversity push has traditionally focused on increasing

Transitions Transitions. They’re important, as are the rituals and celebrations around them.Without acknowledgement of effort leading to success, we might lope along from one thing to the next, not ever yelling, ‘Hurrah!’ at the top of our lungs! Transitions come at all ages – into school, out of school. Birthdays, marriages, divorces and then marriages again. Graduations through all forms of further education. It’s the latter that I’m pleased to celebrate every year as nearly

What Mainstream Employment Services can learn from Disability Employment Services I often ponder what the world would look like in reverse. Today, I’m thinking about how Disability Employment Services are lumped in with Mainstream Employment Services (MES), not the other way around, and yet DES get a lot right. For starters, the best of us offer . We get to know our job seekers’ skills, interests and experience so that we can  From what I’ve heard

Humility in our efforts to help Ableism. It’s a word, like racism and sexism, that describes a societal condition that leads to widespread discrimination and segregation, but focuses on those with a disability label. If ableism describes the culture that subjects people with disabilities to rejection, how do we analyse a service system that tries to help people, but in doing so, ends up reinforcing ablistic values of the culture? This is something I call

Skilled workers overlooked for jobs According to the Independent (27/9/17), ‘disabled people have to apply for 60% more jobs than non-disabled people before finding one’. Although this is stupidly high, the figure is much lower than I would have expected. Unfortunately, my gut reaction would’ve guessed 250%. The truth is that by the time employers get around to advertising for new staff they are under pressure to hire so ‘new’, ‘different’ or ‘unusual’ are not

Want to improve the DES sector? Encourage not-for-profit organisations I don’t doubt the sincerity and commitment of many disability employment services (DES) staff working in for-profit companies. I have met some talented, experienced and passionate people from within. However, the for-profit model does not serve people with disability. Why? Three reasons: 1.    For-profit companies must, by definition and mandate, serve their shareholders first 2.    The persistent need to generate profit always results in sacrificing quality