Many persons with disabilities face multiple barriers to labour market participation and encounter high levels of disadvantage, which converge to increase the likelihood of low confidence and self-esteem. It is important for projects to not only address common barriers such as long term unemployment or low literacy and numeracy levels but also low-esteem and lack of lack confidence in young persons with disabilities when providing training for those furthest away from from the labour market. Young persons furthest from the labour market often require intensive support and specialist interventions in key areas including developing assistive technology skills, mobility skills, ability to communicate needs and associated adjustments to potential employers. Projects, therefore, need to work towards measuring these outcomes to show the real and full impact of their efforts.

‘Employability skills’ focus on the personal, social and transferable skills seen as relevant to all jobs, as opposed to job specific technical skills or qualifications. The acquisition of employability skills may be seen as a necessary first step in path towards long-term employment.

Measuring outcomes is essential for improving quality. Outcomes frameworks provide a context for defining relevant outcomes and performance indicators. They provide a means of accountability to the government, commissioners and providers. They can also act as a catalyst to drive up quality by encouraging a change in culture and behaviour. With pressure on resources and funding, services are expected to combine clinical outcomes with other service level outcomes such as efficiency, productivity and safe practice.

There is interplay between indicators and outcomes, in that indicators are the means by which we can measure whether the outcomes have been achieved. The term soft indicators therefore can be used when referring to the achievements which may ‘indicate’ acquisition or progress towards an outcome. A project may wish, for example, to explore whether an individual’s motivation has increased over the length of the project or intervention. However, this is, to all intents and purposes, a subjective judgement, indicators (or measures) such as improved levels of attendance, improved time keeping and improved communication skills, can suggest strongly that motivation has increased. Not all indicators will be suitable for all target groups, and some will be target group specific, for example persons with disabilities.

This module looks at ways of measuring training outcomes for employment purposes of persons with disabilities. It covers some of the main ideas and debates about measuring outcomes related to being ‘work ready’ or moving towards a position of being ‘work ready’.

Persons with disabilities are less likely to be employed and face barriers to employment opportunities. This is particularly the case for persons with learning disabilities who experience higher rates of being economically inactive compared with persons who have other disabilities. Employment is not the responsibility of any single service or department. Employment levels for people with learning disabilities remain low, with less than 10% of people in the UK known to services in paid work and very few of them working more than a few hours a week of people with learning disabilities can only improve if there is a shared expectation that they can and will work, and if the adjustments are made in the way services work together to achieve this.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) explicitly include persons with disabilities in several of their targets and indicators, including on full and productive employment and decent work. To measure the progress of countries in achieving the SDGs and effectively include people with disabilities in their efforts it is crucial to disaggregate labour market statistics and other data by people’s disability status. The International Labour Organisation(ILO) is promoting the inclusion of the Washington Group on Disability Statistics methodology in the application of labour force surveys. Furthermore, the ILO has drafted a dedicated module on persons with disabilities to be used in labour force surveys. Finding reliable data on the employment of persons with disabilities is difficult to find globally, but there is a strong need for employers to understand the benefits of not only employing non-disabled persons.