2024 WH&S - Disability Inclusive Employment in the Childcare Industry (National)

The early learning/childcare sector is crying out for skilled staff!

• Are you currently working in the early childhood industry and have a silent disability or an observable physical disability?
• Have you been working in the early learning sector, but chosen to keep your disability private at your workplace?
• Do you have disability and are considering or actively looking for work in the early childhood learning industry?
• As a manager, could you improve your working methods and communication with staff with disabilities and improve the overall childcare service?
• As a recruiter in the childcare sector, are you finding it difficult to recruit staff? Have you consider the untapped pool of people with disability (PwD)?
• Do you work with other staff members with disability, in your childcare centre but find it difficult to communicate or work optimally?

Disability inclusion in the early childhood education sector is predominantly focused around equity and inclusion of young children, who have a disability and their families, not staff/employees with disability. 

Currently available toolkits, guidelines, research papers and standards are based on pre school children with disability, not the staff/employees with disability caring for children.
(Victorian Government response to the Education and Learning Issues Paper and Exploitation of People with a Disability. Jan 2020)

Course focus: Practical strategies to recruit and employ early childhood educators with disability. Neurodiversity, hidden disabilities and physical disabilities, do not prevent people from being actively and inclusively employed in the childcare industry. 

People with neurodiversity can significantly enhance the skill set of staff in early childhood education, due to their unique methods of problem solving and innovative thinking.  

Course duration: 1.5 hours.

Prerequisites: Nil.

Course Cost:  Individuals cost $45 (including GST). If you are part of a Service / Centre please contact us for multiple course discount.

Practical and Measurable Learning Objectives:

• to gain an understanding of the reasons why disability recruitment and employment in the childcare industry is so important;
• to list the key jobs in the childcare industry, which are inclusive of people with disability (PwD);
• to gain an understanding of the level of growth and staffing needs in the childcare industry;
• to verbalise the benefits of recruiting and employing people with disability (PwD);
• to source support organisations and resources, to assist the childcare sector to recruit and maintain the employment of PwD; 
• for early learning centre management and staff to gain knowledge about the impact of different types of disability in the workplace, using two different disabilities as examples;
• to gain knowledge and skills in recruiting and working with childcare staff/employees with limb difference; and 
• to provide participants with a resource list of referral resources, to assist in the engagement of people with disability in the early learning/childcare sector.