Earlier this week, I contacted the office of Dame Cheryl Gillan, MP for Chesham for and Amersham regarding her perspective on the autism employment gap.
Dame Cheryl is the chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Autism, a group of backbenchers and peers working to discuss potential policy changes for autism and politics.
Unfortunately, given the current political climate, Mrs Gillan was unable to offer me an interview, she did however send through a statement with statistics from the recent APPGA report and her own personal thoughts.
In the exclusive statement, she said:"Just 16% of autistic adults are in full-time paid employment – a figure which has remained largely the same over the last decade since the Autism Act was introduced.
Meanwhile, according to the Labour Force Survey, just over 51% of all disabled people are in paid work.Â
The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Autism, which I am proud to chair, last month published its findings of our inquiry into the state of autism support and services ten years on from the introduction of the Autism Act.
While improvements have been made to narrow the autism employment gap – for example, awareness among employers since 2016 has increased – unemployment and underemployment among autistic adults is still prevalent and is having a devastating impact on the lives of many autistic people and their families.Â
Our Report has made a number of recommendations to the Government ahead of the publication of the new autism strategy later this year. They include, make autism training compulsory for all Jobcentre Plus staff; appoint an Autism Employment Champion in each Government department to promote the benefits of employing autistic people’; and encourage employers to work towards schemes to improve employment.
Our inquiry also revealed that employers want to do more to recruit, train, employ and promote autistic people but lack the knowledge of what people with autism can contribute to the workplace, and the confidence, to do so. Consequently, we have also made a number of recommendations to employers and representative bodies to close the autism employment gap.
These include, provide the option of flexible working from the start of a person’s employment, and encourage managers and employees to undertake autism training to make their working place autism friendly.
I hope the Government and employers adopt our recommendations so we can bring about long overdue improvements which will significantly improve the lives of autistic people".
This statement will provide a much needed political angle for Changing the Spectrum and will give me a solid insight into how parliamentary groups are working in partnership with relevant charities to tackle the employment gap.
Another important aspect of this is that Dame Cheryl notes that despite positive change, the gap still exists and has "devastating" effects on those looking for work with the condition.
I'm now considering getting in touch with Minister of State for Disabled People, Justin Tomlinson, to see if I can investigate the political side to this story further.
More to follow.