The Organisational Characteristics That Enable Successful Employment Transition for People With Intellectual Disabilities

Background: Social enterprises have the potential to address some of the current barriers that people with an intellectual disability experience in transitioning to open employment opportunities. However, it is unknown in detail how social enterprises are able to facilitate this transition, which limits ability to scale-up these organisational characteristics and strategies.

Method: Twenty-seven in-depth interviews were conducted with staff, supported employees and partner organisations of a social enterprise to understand the organisational characteristics that enables successful transitions.

Results: The organisational characteristics of the social enterprise that enabled transitions included offering a variety of roles and workplace environments for people with intellectual disabilities. Organisational characteristics also included having dedicated staff roles to support people with intellectual disabilities to develop skills to transition and for these support staff to network with open employers to facilitate the transition.

Conclusions: The results provide an adaptable model for other social enterprises in how to structure their organisation to facilitate transition to open employment opportunities.