Work inclusion through supported employment? Perspectives of job counsellors in iceland

Funding Information: This study was conducted as part of the research project ‘Rethinking work inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities’ funded by the Research Council of Norway (‘HELSEVEL’ 2018–2020 number 273259). Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s).Supported employment (SE) programmes are generally considered an effective measure to support disabled people in the labour market. While research about SE has mostly focused on quantitative measures, such as successful placement, scholars have argued for scrutinising the meaning behind programme implementation. To understand how SE contributes to work inclusion of disabled people, we studied how job counsellors view their support and how they give meaning to their own roles and the roles of clients and employers. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 10 job counsellors within the SE programme of the Icelandic public employment service. Analysis of interview data shows that while participants attached general importance to inclusion, their day-to-day approach to client-centred support, relations with employers, and follow-up support reflected a social integration rather than an inclusion perspective. The policy context in which job counsellors implement the programme appeared to play an important role in shaping their approach to support.Peer reviewe

Child and parent perspectives of life quality of children with physical impairments compared with non-disabled peers

Publisher's version (útgefin grein).Background: Life quality has become a widely used concept within rehabilitation and occupational therapy practice. Aim: This study explored child and parent perspectives of life quality of children with physical impairments compared with a group of non-disabled children. Method: Data were collected with the Icelandic self- and proxy-reported versions of the KIDSCREEN-27. For children with physical impairments, reports from 34 children and 40 parents were included in the analyses, and in control group reports from 429 children and 450 parents were included. Results: Children with physical impairments evaluated their life quality within the average range on four out of five life quality dimensions. The lowest scores were within the physical well-being dimension. Self-reported scores of children with physical impairments were higher than those of their parents on all dimensions except autonomy and parent relations. Thus, the parents considered more environmental and personal factors to negatively influence their child’s life quality than children did themselves. Conclusion: Children with physical impairments experience their life quality similarly to non-disabled children. Significance: Focus on life quality can help occupational therapists to identify what circumstances positively or negatively influence client well-being and to focus more on contextual factors that contribute to disablement.We would like to thank the families who participated in the study. We would also like to thank Professor Barbara E Gibson at the University of Toronto who contributed to the research. The study was supported by the Icelandic Research Fund under Grant number 174299-051; and the Doctoral Grants of The University of Iceland Research Fund.Peer Reviewe

Expanding Opportunities for Work and Citizenship: Participation of People with Intellectual Disabilities in Voluntary Work

This article discusses the findings of a study into how voluntary work provides opportunities for work inclusion and citizenship for people with intellectual disabilities. The study is based on qualitative interviews with 12 people with intellectual disabilities engaged in voluntary work in Iceland and Norway. Based on collective qualitative analysis, opportunities for meaningful social relations, competence, contribution and belonging were identified as key aspects of the participants’ experiences of volunteering. The study indicates that voluntary settings offer work that recognises the diversity of preferences, expectations and skills among people with intellectual disabilities. The study’s findings point to the importance of rethinking the meaning and boundaries of work, as participation in voluntary work provides opportunities for both inclusion and citizenship in addition to the participants’ participation in other work settings

Constructing positive identities in ableist workplaces: Disabled employees’ discursive practices engaging with the discourse of lower productivity

This article explores how disabled workers engage with the ableist discourse of disability as lower productivity in constructing positive identities in the workplace. Disabled employees inhabit a contradictory discursive position: as disabled individuals, they are discursively constructed for what they are unable to do, whereas as employees they are constituted as human resources and expected to be able to produce and create value. Our discourse analysis of 30 in-depth interviews with disabled employees identifies three types of discursive practices through which they construct positive workplace identities: (1) practices contesting the discourse of lower productivity as commonly defined; (2) practices contesting the discourse of lower productivity by redefining productivity; and (3) practices reaffirming the discourse of lower productivity yet refusing individual responsibility for it. The study advances the disability literature by highlighting how disabled speakers sustain positive workplace identities despite the negative institutionalized expectations of lower productivity both by challenging and reproducing ableism as an organizing principle

Work Inclusion for People with Intellectual Disabilities in Three Nordic Countries: The Current Policy and Challenges

This article illuminates the work inclusion policies and strategies and the situation today when it comes to including people with intellectual disabilities in workplaces in Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. The article draws on official documents, previous research, and statistics. We discuss challenges regarding the current situation in the light of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and a social relational understanding of disability. The discrepancy between the current situation when it comes to work inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities in these three Nordic countries, and the perspective of human rights and work inclusion are of special interest as these have increasingly provided the framework for policies in relation to the participation of people with disabilities in the labour market. Approaches in Nordic labour market policies and practices must change to protect and promote the rights of people with intellectual disabilities at work

Mensen met een handicap: over medicalisering en sociologisering

Binnen de academische wereld heerst heel wat controverse ten aanzien van het domein van ‘disability studies’. Globaal kunnen twee benaderingen van disability worden onderscheiden: individuele en sociale modellen. Individuele modellen situeren de oorzaak voor het verklaren van een handicap binnen het individu; het medisch model vormt hier een sprekend voorbeeld van. Activisten van binnen en buiten de academische wereld hebben veel kritiek geuit op liggende sociale verklaringsmechanismen voor SEGV. In deze bijdrage wordt het concept van fundamentele sociale oorzaken van ziekte, geïntroduceerd door Link en Phelan (1995), van een sterkere sociaaltheoretische basis voorzien. Een belangrijk aandachtspunt is de positie van deze fundamentele oorzaken binnen het “structure en agency-probleem” van de sociologie. Vervolgens worden de fundamentele oorzaken preciezer omschreven als “relationele sociale systemen van middelenallocatie”. Centraal staat het betoog dat een zorgvuldige conceptualisering van de fundamentele sociale oorzaken noodzakelijk is om ze te kunnen identificeren. Dit wordt aangetoond aan de hand van twee voorbeelden

Explaining the relation between precarious employment and mental well-being. A qualitative study among temporary agency workers

BACKGROUND: From an employee-perspective, temporary agency employment can be considered in two ways. According to the first perspective, agency jobs are associated with job characteristics that adversely affect mental well-being: job insecurity, low wages, a lack of benefits, little training, poorer prospects for the future, high working time flexibility, minimal trade union representation and problematic triadic employment relations. The other perspective underlines that flexibility, learning opportunities and freedom in agency employment enable workers to build the career of their choice, which may positively affect mental well-being. OBJECTIVE: This article aims at interpreting and explaining these conflicting perspectives. In particular, we discuss the role of coping resources (control, support, trust and equity) in the stress pathway between characteristics of temporary agency employment and mental well-being. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews with 12 Belgian temporary agency workers were conducted and analysed from a phenomenological perspective. RESULTS: The results reveal mainly how a lack of coping resources plays a key role in how (precarious) characteristics of temporary agency employment affect employees' mental well-being. CONCLUSIONS: This study illustrates the earlier assumed stress pathway between precarious employment and mental well-being, in which coping resources play an intermediary as well as a moderating role.status: publishe

Dirty work, dirty worker? Stigmatization and coping strategies among domestic workers

© 2015 Elsevier Inc. Domestic work can be perceived to be 'dirty work' in several ways: it is associated with dirt handling, low occupational prestige, and domestic workers have a servile relationship to their clients/employers. This stigma may negatively affect domestic workers' sense of self, and thus coping strategies appear to be critical. In this article, we explore the coping strategies that moderate the relation between the stigma of dirty work and domestic workers' sense of self, based on the analyses of 43 interviews with domestic workers in Belgium. By using a social stress approach in which stigma is considered a stressor, our results reveal a range of maladaptive and adaptive coping strategies that contribute to a negative or a more positive sense of self. Four main categories of coping strategies are discussed: confronting or countering perceptions and behaviours, occupational ideologies, social weighting and defensive tactics. The first two categories are adaptive coping strategies; the last two can be adaptive or maladaptive. We also reveal that workers used adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies simultaneously, leading to mixed implications for their sense of self.publisher: Elsevier articletitle: Dirty work, dirty worker? Stigmatisation and coping strategies among domestic workers journaltitle: Journal of Vocational Behavior articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2015.11.008 content_type: article copyright: Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.status: publishe

Supported employment between ableism and inclusion: analysis of the perspectives of job coaches in an IPS-based programme

n/