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The transition from school into the workforce is a critically important time in a young person’s life, where the right support can help set them up for success. But what does the data tell us about how well NDIS employment supports are working and what good practice looks like?
On June 3rd, the NDIA released the 6th Provider Quarterly Report - School Leaver Employment (Quarterly Report). The Report analyses the effectiveness of employment supports and the progress towards employment outcomes for participants of school-leaving age. It looks at data from 7,326 school-leaving participants with Employment Assistance funded in their plans, between July 2023 to June 2024.
As someone who works with high school students and their families, I was keen to find out which NDIS-funded supports are best supporting the transition of school leavers with employment goals into different workplace settings.
Work skills
Unsurprisingly, the Report showed that when school leavers spent more time receiving skill-specific training, they had a higher chance of developing specific skills, which then had a flow-on effect of increasing the likelihood of gaining paid employment. Makes sense!
Employer Engagement and Job Customisation
Job customisation is another contributing factor to paid employment. Job customisation is a process where the skills, interests, and potential contributions of the school leaver are matched with the needs of the employer. It requires providers to develop an in-depth understanding of the skills of the school leaver through the Discovery process, as well as negotiating customised job descriptions and providing specific support in the workplace which decreases over time as independence and natural support increases.
The Final Report of the Disability Royal Commission also prioritises the adoption of customised employment models. The Quarterly Report also highlighted that ‘participants who made significant progress towards or fully achieved their employer engagement, education, and job customisation milestones were 1.8 times more likely to find employment compared to participants who made no or some progress towards similar milestones’. Yet, ‘employer engagement, education and job customisation’ made up just 5% of the time NDIS employment support providers spent with participants.
In trying to understand this low percentage, I called upon my (somewhat limited) knowledge of customised employment. The reality is that this approach is highly individualised, labour-intensive, and requires time to discover the participant’s skills and interests, develop job opportunities, and provide ongoing job supports. The first ‘Discovery’ phase of customised employment can regularly require 40 hours of 1:1 support and facilitation. Perhaps ‘job customisation’ has a low percentage of hours delivered because participants just aren’t being funded adequately for this very individualised model of employment support? Additionally, recommendation 7.17 in Volume 7 of the Final Report of The Royal Commission identified gaps in training and resources for Disability Employment Services staff in customised employment and employer engagement, indicating that specific training in this model is also required.
More time in work experience
The Report found that participants who spent more time in work experience were more likely to gain paid employment. However, only 15% of total training time was dedicated to on-the-job work experience. The reason for this is unclear but could be explained by a few factors.
For one thing, the shared responsibility between the NDIS and mainstream education services to facilitate work experience opportunities may be leading to confusion about when work experience is an NDIS support and when it’s the school’s responsibility (generally, it is an NDIS support when it’s complementary to what is provided by the school). Additionally, there is variation in how much work experience coordination schools provide, depending on the school and location. Work experience opportunities require strong networks with local employers who are willing to support school leavers with disability. These connections and opportunities are unpredictable and inconsistent across the country. Similarly, work experience coordination and logistics may fall onto informal supports, and this may not be realistic nor reasonable.
Building social, presentation and communication skills
The Report shows that the combined time spent on building participants’ social, presentation, and communication skills and work skills was 47% of all training time. Social, presentation and communication skills are often referred to as ‘soft skills’ for employment and are transferable across all workplaces and employment opportunities, which may explain why a lot of time is being dedicated to these skills. However, when reviewing the impact of building social, presentation and communication skills on the chance of finding paid employment, the outcome is that these students are only 1.1 times more likely to find employment.
The bigger picture
As well as being an exciting time, the transition to the post-school world can cause significant anxiety, worry and uncertainty for some school-leavers and their supporters.
Here are a few ideas from my current experience in working with school-leavers, for how to make the process smoother:
- NDIS Goals: Does the school-leaver have an employment goal? If not, and employment is important to the school-leaver, offer support to develop and refine one.
- NDIS resources: If the school-leaver would like some guidance in developing their employment-related goal for their NDIS Plan, the NDIS ‘My Work Goals’ workbook may be helpful, as might the NDIS Resource ‘Let’s Talk About Work’.
- Individual employment definition: Talk to the school-leaver about what ‘employment’ means to them. Are they looking for open, award-wage employment? Supported employment? Volunteering? A customised job role? Whatever it is, it is critical that the school-leaver knows what their options are, and that they have the right to change their mind later.
- Recording experience and skills: If the school-leaver has any qualifications or previous work experience, be sure to document these and be ready to share this information with potential employment support providers and/or potential employers.
As we continue to move forward and work towards successful employment outcomes for school leavers and other NDIS participants, I hope that we as a sector and community can take key learnings from the Report to drive better practice. With a focus on facilitating more work experience opportunities and individual job customisation, we will hopefully see an increase in opportunities for economic participation outcomes for NDIS participants.
