Inclusive recruitment is good for business. That was the message to Mayo employers at a recent Open Door breakfast seminar in the Harlequin Hotel, Castlebar.
The event was held by the Irish Association of Supported Employment (IASE ), which has its head office in Belmullet, and it highlighted to employers the business benefits of hiring and retaining employees with disabilities through a model called ‘supported employment’.
The seminar was the first in a series of events which will take place across the Border, Midlands, West (BMW ) region over the next two years as part of the Open Door project.
Margaret Halloran, from Westport, is an employment development officer with the Open Door project. She explained: “Open Door wants to ‘open doors’ to the workplace by raising awareness amongst employers about the positive contribution people with disabilities can, and do, make at work.” Supported employment is a model, used internationally, to assist people with disabilities to find, secure and maintain jobs in the open labour market.
Open Door is a Disability Activation Project co-funded by the European Union under the European Social Fund (Human Capital Investment Operation Programme 2007 – 2013 ), and the Irish Government through the Department of Social Protection and Pobal.
For more, visit www.iase.ie
