Employment, Skills and Training

We believe that pre-employment programs can be valuable supports for parents and other groups who have spent time out of the workforce. ParentsNext could be enhanced by several recommendations covering the program's compulsory participation requirements and eligibility; women's economic equality and workforce participation; addressing structural and cultural barriers; and funding and service delivery arrangements.

This submission to the Victorian Legislative Assembly Economy and Infrastructure Committee highlighted a range of challenges that people with disability experience when accessing and completing TAFE courses, followed by solutions to address those challenges including early intervention at school level and training to TAFE academic and non-academic staff to provide meaningful, targeted supports students with disability.

Mission Australia’s submission highlights our ongoing concerns about the Targeted Compliance Framework (TCF) and its impact on participants in the ParentsNext program, recommending that the program be made voluntary and noting that we will continue to monitor the effects of the TCF through our services.

In this submission we highlight the need to make the future Disability Employment Services program more accessible and integrated better with the NDIS, with flexible entry pathways that cater to changing employment capacities and aspirations of individuals. The future model needs to be more person-centred and place greater emphasis on finding good-quality employment, rather than compliance and enforcement.

The Royal Commission called for submissions on employment of people with disability. Our submission highlighted the Young willing and able: Youth Survey Disability Report 2019 and focused on the need to address systemic and structural issues that impact on people with disability from gaining meaningful employment.