Jobsupport is a non-profit organisation committed to improving employment outcomes for people with intellectual disability
Jobsupport’s ‘What Works?’ initiative includes:
– Commissioning research to identify what works
– Encouraging an informed choice between DES and SLES services by providing employment outcomes data in a user-friendly format
– Working with Virginia Commonwealth University to provide online training courses about ‘What Works?’ in achieving employment outcomes for people with intellectual disability
Evidence-based Practice Research
Jobsupport defines ‘evidence-based practice’ as service practices that results in measurably greater outcomes when compared to alternate practices.
Jobsupport commissioned the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center (Virginia Commonwealth University) and the Center for Disability Studies (University of Sydney) to conduct a review of the available evidence-based best practice in achieving open employment for people with intellectual disability.
Copies of the two reports are available in the links below. It is important to note that Open Employment is termed ‘Supported Employment overseas. The Evaluation of the Moderate Intellectual Disability Loading report is the only Australian report that is focussed specifically on Moderate Intellectual Disability, and is available in the buttons below.
Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Training Course
This course is not currently running. A series of video presentations are being produced and more information on this will be published once available.
Informed Choice Information Sessions
Peter De Natris runs information sessions for school leavers with intellectual disability, their families and teachers each year. The purpose of these information sessions is to assist school leavers in making an informed choice between services. Due to the impact of Covid19, these sessions were not run in 2020.
Peter’s 2023 presentation can be viewed here.
DES Service Outcomes
The Disability Employment Service (DES) program publishes star ratings for all services every 3 months. These ratings are for all service participants and are not provided by type of disability.
DES also publishes employment outcomes by type of disability. The last published outcomes are December 2017. The ‘Searchable Outcomes’ spreadsheet is available below, and allows for searches by type of disability and locality.
Links to these factsheets are available below:
Most recent Intellectual Disability Service Outcomes Sydney | Melbourne | Brisbane
June 2023 Searchable Outcomes by Type of Disability
Dec 2017 Searchable Outcomes by Type of Disability
The original DES data is linked here – Stars** | Outcomes
** The government Star Ratings are currently under review – we will publish an updated link when it is released.
TTW Service Outcomes
The NSW Transition To Work (TTW) program ran from 2002 and was replaced by the NDIS School Leaver Employment Supports (SLES) initiative. No outcome data for the SLES initiative has been released.
The NSW Department of Aging, Disability and Home Care (ADHC) published the employment outcomes for every service. The final data was published in 2016 for 2013 school leavers. A TTW program ran for 2 years (with a possible 6 month extension). Outcomes were published 2.5 years after each school leaver year. These reported outcomes are for all service participants, and are not provided by type of disability. The ADHC TTW 2009 evaluation reported that 62.3% of all participants had an intellectual disability and 7.6% autism. The original ADHC data is no longer published, but can be found in the following links (each report has subsets of data per local region):
Transition to Work Outcomes Summary 2004 – 2013
The original Transition to Work Outcome data is available in these links: 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013
.