On October 16th 2019, Portuguese partners Federação Portuguesa de Autismo (FPDA) and Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP) delivered the first face-to-face session in Portugal of the training “New dynamics for professional inclusion of people on the Autism Spectrum” addressed to potential employers. The session was attended by nine persons working for seven different companies.
The training, that will be delivered until January 2020 and counts with 40 hours of online training and 10 hours of face-to-face sessions split into two different sessions, has three different modules:
- Legislative framework and public incentives for the employment of people with disabilities
- About autism
- Good practices on employment of people with autism
In this first face-to-face session in Portugal, the first module was delivered by José Miguel Nogueira from UCP.
Participants of this session work for the following companies:
- El Corte Inglés;
- FPDA;
- Decathlon;
- Geocargo;
- Jardim zoológico de Lisboa;
- IKEA;
- ANPAR.
Another four different entities are also benefiting from this training:
- Domino’s pizza;
- AURPIA;
- Fábrica Sant’anna.
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. At this initial stage, a range of good practices in relation to employment have been also identified through a literature review.
