Right to Work creating education and job opportunities for people with intellectual disability and autism

It's the brainchild of allied-health therapist Clare Jones and her business partner Carolyn Roche.

READ MORE:

"Parents are often the innovators when it comes to these kinds of programs," Ms Jones said.

"Carolyn is a parent of a young person with intellectual disability and autism and she could could see that when her son finished Year 12 at Goulburn Crescent School, which is a school for special education, the only real option for him would be to move into a day program."

Ms Roche was concerned that there wouldn't be opportunities for her son to continue to learn and find meaningful employment, so she approached Ms Jones for help.

"I had been working with her son for some time and together we came up with a program that we could see would benefit others if we rolled it out further. That's how it all began," Ms Jones said.

Right to Work creates opportunities within open employment and the wider community for people with disability to find meaningful work.

"We wanted to create opportunities for them to get out and experience inclusion in open employment," Ms Jones said.

Right to Work offers training programs that are focused to deliver employment skills.

"There's a few different ways that we do that," Ms Jones said.

"We have training programs, some are full-day training programs and others are more flexible delivery, tailored to the individual."

Through these training programs participants develop skills in communication and program solving, planning and organising, self-management and other employment skills.

"We focus on developing those skills and we're also developing more specific training programs, around micro business development, for people who would like to start their own micro business and run that in the community."

Around 20 young people have moved through Right to Work training programs since the organisation opened the doors in February last year.

"We've probably got about 20 local businesses and organisations that are partnering with us to provide volunteer work placements," Ms Jones said.

"We have support workers that go into the work places with the young person with disability and support them to work in the workplace. So they're learning skills on the job but at the same time they're also building connections with employers and other members of the community."

Isolation can be a huge issue for community members living with disability or autism.

"I think it's vital for everybody's health and wellbeing to be valued as a contributing member of their community and employment plays a big part in that, whether it's voluntary employment or paid employment, knowing that you're making a valued contribution to community is a really big part of peoples' health and wellbeing," Ms Jones said.

Ms Roche's son has been participating in group training programs and is now moving into one-to-one individualised support for workplace training.

"And he's exploring the concept of establishing his own micro-business too, so that will be a big focus for him next year," Ms Jones said.

In regional communities like Goulburn organisations like Right to Work can be few and far between.

"There certainly was a gap in the community before we came along," Ms Jones said.

"We weren't aware of any programs in Goulburn that were offering something similar and now that we're up and running we're hearing that from a lot of other regional communities as well."

Skills on Screen is a Right to Work education program run in partnership with Goulburn Mulwaree Council's youth services team.

Funded by the NSW Government's youth opportunities program, the project supports young people to communicate the skills that they have through video resumes, which they can share with local employers.

"We find with the young people that we're working with communication with verbal language is a big challenge," Ms Jones said.

"This is a way of showing employers their talents and strengths and abilities in a visual form rather than relying on written resumes or verbal language to communicate those things."

The project has supported 18 young adults with intellectual disability and autism to develop and practise employability skills, and then communicate these skills to potential employers through video resumes.

The group has also created a short film, which communicates their message about disability and employment.

"We were assisted in the videography by Caitlin Welch from Reconnected Narratives," Ms Jones said.

"The short film and video resumes will be launched at an event to celebrate Goulburn's International Day for People with Disability on Monday, December 5."