Opportunities for people with disabilities

Further to the letter "Education for disabled students" (May 16), I would like to add some comments on behalf of the Equal Partners Foundation. First of all, we agree completely with the views of the Movement in Favour of Rights for Persons with a Disability with regard to education and employment. Equal Partners Foundation holds inclusive education as one of its most basic principles and indeed all services are given out in the community.

Unfortunately, once a person with a disability reaches the age of 16, very few opportunities are presented to this person especially if s/he cannot find work in the open market due to the disability. This is a problem met by most of our members once they finish school and for this reason the "Stepping Out Programme" was set up whereby adolescents and adults are taught skills towards becoming more autonomous. Still, it is important for a person to feel that s/he is contributing to society and this is where employment comes in.

It is a known fact that the adult training centres are not coping with the demand and a number of people are on the waiting list to join one of these centres. The recent programme launched by ETC for supporting employment for people with a disability was a long-awaited but very welcome help for people with a disability.

Still, employers need to be encouraged to employ a person with a disability in their team and this can only happen through the enforcement of legislation, education and awareness as well as adequate support for the employer.

Equal Partners has recently launched the Koperattiva Socjali FrancoSi in partnership with the College of Agriculture and in collaboration with Id-Dar tal-Providenza in order to create work opportunities for people with a disability who are unable to find work on the open market and as an alternative to ATCs.

This cooperative has just started off and involves a small team made of people with a disability as well as people without disability where they work together in an inclusive and supported environment. The support of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Social Policy was publicly announced but we are still awaiting meetings to finalise this support.

My hope for the near future is that further initiatives are created to remove this existing lacuna for school-leavers with a disability. We have a lot of potential contributors for our workforce who are unable to find employment due to limitations in the environment. We need to realise that our society could be much richer in more ways than one with the help of people with different abilities and resources.