The present study analyzed relationships between employment of people with intellectual disabilities and a socio-demographic factor, a health and hindrance factor, a social support factor, a vocational rehabilitation service and employment-related fac...
The present study analyzed relationships between employment of people with intellectual disabilities and a socio-demographic factor, a health and hindrance factor, a social support factor, a vocational rehabilitation service and employment-related factor so as to clarify employment decision factors of people with intellectual disabilities.
The present study performs convenience sampling of total 400 persons, who are presently in a general employment state including supported employment, are employed at sheltered workshop & labor working facilities and are unemployed, among people with intellectual disabilities aged more than 15 and living in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, and then the material was collected in a self-writing way that people with intellectual disabilities as a survey subject writes themselves in a questionnaire made by an investigator.
We showed emblems, etc., containing face impression for the serious people with intellectual disabilities who don't have Korean language understanding ability, and people with intellectual disabilities were allowed to select one of the questions through one-to-one slow explanation of protectors, social workers and vocational rehabilitation specialists.
In order to secure that people with intellectual disabilities can become a counterpart of a meaningful dialogue and reliability of an answer and a statement, the questionnaire was composed to draw direct response from people with intellectual disabilities at the maximum by making them be able to answer in a single answer type. The questionnaire of total 400 copies were distributed and only 247 copies among them were recovered, so 207 copies except 40 copies with poor response were used for the final analysis of the present study. As an analysis method of the present study, characteristics of survey subjects according to employment were calculated through statistics such as frequency, percentage, an average, χ^(2) test and correlation analysis and logistic regression were used to clarify factors affecting employment decision.
The major results of the present study are that it could be confirmed that people with intellectual disabilities can become meaningful information providers by including them in the research process, and that it was investigated that the employment decision factors of people with intellectual disabilities are decided by various factors such as age of people with intellectual disabilities, reception of national basic livelihood security, existence of disabled family, usual life ability, communication ability, social support of social workers and vocational rehabilitation specialists, experience of vocational rehabilitation service, previous employment experience and job adapting technology ability and others.
Namely, it was analyzed that if they are older, if they are not reception subjects of national basic livelihood security, if there is a disabled person among a family, if they has better usual life ability and communication ability, if social support of social workers and vocational rehabilitation specialists is higher, if their experience of vocational rehabilitation service is less, if they have more employment experiences, and if their job technology ability is better, people with intellectual disabilities have higher employment probability.
If suggestions for a basis of an improvement method of employment enhancement and policies based on the above-mentioned research results are given, it is as follows.
First, it is necessary that an employment protection measure for the serious and aged people with intellectual disabilities should be expanded.
For this, it is judged that a method strengthening incentive for employers hiring the serious and aged people with intellectual disabilities is also a good countermeasure. Also, it can be said that reinspection of employment policies and various employment policies reflecting employment intention of people with intellectual disabilities are necessary to grasp accurate employment desire and intention before provision of vocational rehabilitation service and to draw intensive support of specialists from evaluation and inspection about job interest and aptitude, etc. to an employment recommendation process and initial workplace adaptation for employment revitalization of people with intellectual disabilities.
Second, it is necessary that a system or a program that can act prudently in the employment entrance stage is necessary to draw positive employment experience in employment of people with intellectual disabilities.
Third, as people with intellectual disabilities has difficulty to express their own intention according to disability characteristics and are difficult to get employed themselves, it is necessary that social workers and vocational rehabilitation specialists taking charge of employment work should understand the employment environment accurately and learn professional knowledge first for this in order to actively suggest problems becoming a hindrance for maintenance and development of job activity to related policies or authorities and to ask necessary help at proper time by raising rights consciousness.
Finally, it is thought that efforts in an active political dimension are required to raise independence wills of people with intellectual disabilities themselves and to easily form social atmosphere for their economic activity's participation by letting people with intellectual disabilities themselves or their family as well as employers or social members know that people with intellectual disabilities can perform job life and independence life and advantages according to this are not less through recognition improvement about people with intellectual disabilities.