Moving through the crossroads: An approach to improving the employment prospects of people with disabilities

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Résumé (français)

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Résumé (anglais)

For many years, people with disabilities have been about two-thirds as likely as people without disabilities to be employed. The employment rate of some people with disabilities has persistently hovered at around one-third the rate of non-disabled people. Financial estimates of the cost of this problem in Canada differ considerably, but are on the order of many billions of dollars annually. This issue is situated at the crossroads of theories about disablement that sometimes converge, sometimes stand in opposition to one another but that often go in quite different directions in terms of policy and program implications. This research seeks to move through the theoretical crossroads by seeking out the general socio-demographic and disability-specific factors, that inhere in individuals and in their environments, that are most predictive of whether people will obtain ‘decent work’ after the onset of work-limiting disability. An aim is to develop policy-relevant conclusions that could help inform the design of programs to improve the employment prospects of people with disabilities with significant levels of disability who are not presently working. The research draws mainly from the Canadian Survey on Disability. The research is by Cameron Crawford for his PhD thesis in Critical Disability Studies at York University. Cameron has written and spoken extensively on employment and disability and on many other policy-relevant issues concerning people with disabilities.