Throughout February 2019, IVEA partners set three different focus groups in Spain, Hungary and Portugal to identify the soft skills that need to be addressed in the framework of the IVEA training to ensure full inclusion of persons with autism in the labour market.
The IVEA project has chosen this form of qualitative research in order to raise the voice of persons with autism, families and employers and see what they lack in their training. Autismo Burgos, Mars Alapítvány and the Portuguese Federation of Autism have been asked about their perceptions, opinions, and experiences towards the aspects that are important to be addressed on the IVEA training for persons with autism and for employers and which must be taken into consideration when accessing the labor market.
The result of these interviews is the identification of the transversal competences (soft skills) that should be introduced to complement the academic curricula, including social and daily life skills and independence.
At this initial stage, a range of good practices in relation to employment have been also identified through a literature review.
This procedure has an added value to phase of the project, as partners can now better understand the difficulties, needs and the good practices on employment of people with autism through the knowledge and the experiences exchanged among the different participants. IVEA partners are currently working on the exhaustive analysis of both the literature review and the focus group results in order to create the content of the IVEA trainings for person with autism and employers.
See the album with the pictures of the focus group meetings in Burgos and in Lisbon