Autism Association of WA 2020 Annual Report

Employment Placement and Support Program Our Employment Support program is the only Autism

In collaboration with the Therapy and Clinical Services team, we now have the PEARLES Employment group. This 10-week program targets skill development for finding and maintaining employment through practical skill development tailored to vocational needs. 5-Star Employment Rating Government along with only a handful of other services nationally. This award acknowledges the team’s delivery of high-quality services, knowledge and support to job seekers with Autism. Autism Awareness in Employment During the year we worked with 230 individuals from 10 organisations to promote employment opportunities for people with Autism. Some of the organisations we collaborated with include Bankwest, Dive in Festival, Crown, Department of Health, Key Engineering, Child and Adolescent Community health, Price Cooper Waterhouse, Linkforce, BHP, and Compass Group. Our program was the only program in Western Australia to receive a 5-star rating from the Commonwealth

This year the program expanded to support over 520 participants to find and maintain employment across a range of industries and sectors. This included government, mining, administration, hospitality, information technology, banking, real estate, warehousing, law firms, universities and many more. We partnered with schools and families to provide information on employment pathways and support options for school leavers through our School Engagement and Transition service. This collaboration enables us to make contact early with school- leavers and support them through the transition to employment. This year, opportunities for individuals with Autism to complete internships in businesses continued. We supported interns at BHP, Woodside and Bankwest, with some gaining permanent employment with these companies. We were also very excited to partner with both large and small businesses to develop training and other resources to assist the business community to increase capacity to employ job seekers with Autism in the coming year. Most importantly, we trained and matched individuals with jobs, placed people in jobs with on-the-job training, and worked with employers to expand new opportunities for jobseekers with Autism.

specific employment service in Australia, supporting job seekers to find and maintain employment. Our staff work with individuals to ensure work-readiness, as well as identifying and matching jobs to the strengths, skills, interests, and aspirations of the jobseeker.

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