British man works to eliminate barriers to disabled people's employment

From BBC News:

A man from Weston claims more barriers need to be removed in order to help disabled people find jobs.

Stephen Ledbrook is working with the charity Trailblazers, which claims there are 1.3m disabled people in the UK who want work but can't get it.

He says he's dealt with advisers before who "don't understand disability and put them all under one umbrella".

Local job centre managers say advisers are specially trained and everyone is dealt with on a case by case basis.

A total of 200 disabled jobseekers are working all over the country to investigate the difficulties in finding work, from going to job centres and finding out the attitudes employers have.

His research involves checking whether advisers understand the wide ranging types of disability.

"Personally, I have muscular dystrophy and just getting to a job centre in the first place is difficult; most job centres are very hard to park, so that's the block to start with," said Stephen.

"Also, when you visit a job centre, you usually see a disabled employment advisor and you have to tell them about your disability - the impression I get sometimes is that they cast all disabilities as one."

He also said in the past he's been warned about losing his benefits because he finds it difficult to get to the job centre to sign on.

"On various occasions when I've had to sign on, if I've had a problem getting in, they've said to me if I don't make it in, it could affect my benefit, which is the worst thing they could say."

Stephen also believes employers are worried about people in wheelchairs because of the practical barriers, in his opinion, "sometimes they worry about how they're going to cope in this building and they worry about all the other things on top of it, which is wrong; they should take you as the person."

The claims relating to the job centres, were put to Susan West, customer service operations manager for Job Centre Plus, in Dorset and Somerset.

Although she couldn't comment specifically on Stephen's case and disability, she said: "In terms of parking for disabled customers, the job centre doesn't provide parking for any of its customers.

"What we do is provide access for customers, and I've had a look round at all job centres in the Somerset area and all of them have public car parks quite close at hand.

"If you're disabled, then you can get a blue badge from the council, then you can use the parking bays that are available through them."

Susan West said all of their advisers had induction training, which covered disability issues.

"Generally we do aim to treat every customer as an individual and health problems cover a wide range of areas, as do disabilities.

"Some are quite evident disabilities and others you wouldn't know unless someone told you. Our advisers are trained in that area, but we depend upon the person telling us they've got a disability."

With regards to Stephen's concerns about being warned about losing his benefits for not making appointments, although Susan wasn't able to comment on his case specifically, she said: "There are responsibilities on customers depending on what benefit they're claiming, but we do have some flexibilities. We do try and treat people as individuals."