People with moderate intellectual disabilities (MID) have the same needs and desires in their adulthood as every other people – they want to have independent living, find their spot within society, find employment and identify their value. Parents have a crucial role in decision making for their children with (MID) also in their adulthood. National legislation is slowly improving in favour of employing people with moderate intellectual disabilities. The most important Acts are: Social Inclusion of Disabled Persons Act, which foresees reintroduction of full disability compensation for adults with MID in case of their employment and job loss, and Family Code, which regulates the removal of legal capacity and extensions of parental rights beyond the age of majority. Despite these regulations and positive effects of supported employment for people with moderate intellectual disabilities, the prevalent form of employment remains employment under special conditions.
Empirical research investigates to what extend are the parents of individuals with MID familiar with the employment possibilities for their grown-up children and with the legal Acts regulating the employment of people with MID and how keen are the parents of grown-up children with MID on their competitive employment. The researcher conducted eight semi-structured interviews with parents from the Gorenjska region and from Central Slovenia whose grown-up children are employed under special conditions.
The research has shown that the interviewees have mostly limited knowledge about the legislation in this field or about the types of employment for people with MID. The research reveals that in most cases, parents do not consider the competitive employment as better option in comparison to the employment under special conditions. The latter is regarded as the one offering more security, stability, work and daily routine and what is the most important, the possibility for social inclusion of their grown-up children. In the contrary, the competitive employment is associated mostly with hesitations even though the parents point out many capabilities of their children. Their hesitations are related to the acceptance and inclusion of people with MID by other employees, bad influence of society, the profit as employer’s priority, unadjusted working speed and fear of failure. The parents express that the key to successful competitive employment would be adapted working conditions such as short-time work, structured tasks, repetitions, adjusted working speed and the presence of job-coach.
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