Partner Article

Remploy to close

Have you ever ordered an item online from the well known store that is always ‘yours’? You may have noticed , as I did, that the outer box it arrived in was made by Remploy, the impending closure of which (all 12 factories), was announced last week on the BBC news. Unions were quoted as saying that it would be very difficult for the disabled employees to find work if the closures go ahead given the current climate. I agree.

This story has particular interest to everyone at OVCV, because a little while ago, we had the wonderful opportunity to make a small trial of video cv’s with some disabled adults who were already on work schemes at various places, with a view to hopefully starting a sea change in the way adults with disabilities are viewed by potential employers. The CV took the format of us filming the candidate in their work environment, for example working in drug replenishment within a hospital, and having their colleagues, line managers etc do short pieces to camera to provide a fully rounded picture of the person’s capabilities as an employee. The results were impressive.

All the usual arguments revolving around equality and diversity have been put to us, but we would still ask this question;

Surely it is better to let an employer see a disabled applicant’s full abilities, to let them see the person and not the disability, than to rely on a paper cv and application, upon which any special needs have to be stated and which risks some pre conceived notion in the mind of the employer.

The Government wants the employees of Remploy to move into the mainstream workforce, the unions presumably would have concerns over funding for support in these times of budget cuts. We would never presume to debate the issues faced by the disabled community, but welcome the opportunity to talk more to interested parties about our work.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by John Hudson .