According to Employment and Social Development Canada’s Skills for Success program, nine key foundational and transferable skills are needed to participate and thrive in learning, work, and life. These are adaptability, collaboration, communication, creativity and innovation, digital, numeracy, problem solving, reading, and writing.
Following are some of the questions behind a literature review recently undertaken by a team led by IWH Senior Scientist Dr. Emile Tompa: 1) What do we know about the foundational and transferable skill levels and employment outcomes of persons with disabilities? 2) What barriers do these individuals face in advancing their skills? 3) What are some promising practices to address these barriers? And 4) What impact did the COVID-19 pandemic have on persons with disabilities in their skill development?
In this presentation, Tompa discusses what the team learned from the research literature to date, and from interviews with key stakeholders in the Canadian and international work disability policy arena. These include members of the disability community with knowledge and experience of skill development programs, policy-makers, researchers and program/service providers.
