Supporting People With Intellectual Disabilities
Mission:
Dincat is an organization that represents people with intellectual disabilities in Catalonia.
They bring together almost 300 smaller organizations and represent the rights of more than 40,000 people with intellectual disabilities and their families in the territory.
One of the great challenges facing the organization is to improve access to the job market for these people, due to their integration possibilities and the consequent option of obtaining their own income are scarce. This directly affects the ability of people with intellectual disabilities to live independently, with the necessary supports.
Why It Matters:
The employment rate of people with intellectual disabilities in 2019 stood at just over 20%, while that of people without disabilities, almost 70%. This shows that only one in five active people with intellectual disabilities are working.
In addition, this situation has been aggravated by the COVID-19 crisis. As a result, 10% of people with intellectual disabilities employed in ordinary companies have lost their jobs in the last year.
Dincat defends that a job is a right that all people with intellectual disabilities have, a belief supported by the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities in its article 27.
“The figures show a huge gap that justifies, without a doubt, the need to improve the current model of labor insertion of this group. We must move towards the objective of guaranteeing the right to work for all by means of significantly increasing employment opportunities to find suitable jobs for all people with intellectual disabilities who want to work”. Mauro Tomasino, Account Manager, TEAM LEWIS Barcelona.