Looking for work with a learning disability: ‘You feel like a failure’

Burns’ experience is not a rare case but rather reflective of Britain’s widespread crisis in disability unemployment. While discrimination of disabled people within the workplace continues for many, even getting hired in the first place is an uphill battle – something that’s particularly acute for people with learning disabilities or autism. Just 16% (pdf) of people with autism are in full-time paid work, according to the National Autistic Society, while less than 6% of learning disabled people are in full-time employment.

That’s compared to 47% of disabled people generally. More worryingly, things aren’t getting better: the employment rate for autism has seen negligible improvement(pdf) in a decade and the number of learning disabled people in work has actually fallen in the past five years.

I would add that in 2009, before all the further austerity cuts to disability benefits and services, the NAS found that among autistic adults:

· One third are currently without a job or access to benefits

· Over half have spent time with neither a job nor access to benefits, some for over ten years

· Just 15% have a full-time job

· 79% of those on Incapacity Benefit want to work

· 82% who have applied for benefits say that they needed support to apply.

You really do have to wonder how people are supposed to live, though I don’t need to go further down that road right now. The situation is just not good.

Looking for work with a learning disability: ‘You feel like a failure’