Lisa Cox:
Are you sick of the same old disability stereotypes? We were too, so we did something about it. Welcome to That Was Unexpected. The Disability Lifestyle podcast for everyone. Brought to you by Youngcare and hosted by me, Lisa Cox. Welcome to. That was unexpected. The Disability Lifestyle podcast for everyone, brought to you by care and hosted by me,

Lisa Cox:. Join our amazing guests as we delve into topics that don’t often hit the headlines. So let’s do this. Prepare for the unexpected.

00:00:28:03 – 00:00:49:10
Lisa Cox:
If you’re low vision like me, or have other accessibility requirements, check out our show notes. Before we get started, we’d like to acknowledge the traditional owners of land on which we record. We pay our respects to the elders, past, present and emerging. The Yankees done. Welcome to the podcast. It’s really great to have you here.

00:00:49:11 – 00:00:51:15
Bianca Stern:
Thank you so much for having me.

00:00:52:00 – 00:01:05:00
Lisa Cox:
Yeah. So now you’ve heard Bianca’s intro from All Things Is Equal ATE. Now, Bianca, for those who aren’t familiar with ATE, can you tell us a little bit about it?

00:01:05:02 – 00:01:32:08
Bianca Stern:
Sure. So all Things Equal is a hospitality based, nonprofit social enterprise. We provide training and award wage employment for people with disability, and then we support them to move out of our supportive training environment into other roles in the hospitality sector. So we essentially exist to bridge the gap between people with disability and the wider community. And we do have to exist because we don’t see enough of what we’re doing currently.

00:01:32:10 – 00:01:47:10
Bianca Stern:
And, you know, with some of the statistics that I know have been shared on this podcast before. We honestly just need to be doing better as a society to be supporting people with disability into real, meaningful award wage paying jobs. And yet in the workforce.

00:01:47:11 – 00:02:13:05
Lisa Cox:
That’s so important and so good to hear the of what might do as well. Because I had a dream to be with you a little while ago, and I know I’ve reached out to you. I’m like, please tell me that award wage. Because unfortunately, people with the intellectual disabilities and other abilities are paid $6 or less an hour in some roles, but yours is definitely not like that, which I’m so excited to hear about.

00:02:13:08 – 00:02:34:12
Lisa Cox:
So you’ve got a really unique employment model and as you mentioned before, the disability employment rate is not awesome, roughly half of that with people with that disability. So you’ve got people who want to work and an industry, the hospitality industry who needs people to work. So you’re like a Tinder of employees.

00:02:34:13 – 00:02:36:02
Bianca Stern:
In a quite.

00:02:36:03 – 00:02:37:13
Lisa Cox:
In a strange way.

00:02:37:15 – 00:03:07:05
Bianca Stern:
Yeah. Quite literally. So we’re saying, we’re saying to the hospitality sector, you guys keep complaining about your staff shortages. You can’t find, you know, it’s such a transient workforce. you’re always desperate for first off ones that are actually going to stick around and be part of building a great team culture. And guess what? We have got amazing people with disability in our network currently, and over 100 people with disability plus on our waitlist, dreaming of their first ever, roles in the hospitality sector.

00:03:07:05 – 00:03:09:09
Bianca Stern:
So it’s essentially a win win.

00:03:09:11 – 00:03:29:05
Lisa Cox:
Exactly right. And I suppose I know about the benefits of hiring disabled employees, but from your point of view, what are some of the benefits of hiring people with a disability? Maybe. Maybe not too sure. Why would you want an employee with disabilities?

00:03:29:06 – 00:03:48:04
Bianca Stern:
So I think there’s there’s, a range of ways I can sort of answer this question, but I guess it’s very much a reflective piece. So as an employer, what do you currently need in your workplace that you are missing? So is that a specific skill set? Specific. you know, your, your culture in the, in the, in the business could be improved.

00:03:48:08 – 00:04:14:03
Bianca Stern:
What is it do you need and staff members that can actually, you know, have some career progression and, and actually, will be totally committed and show up on time and not take sick days because, a lot of the time for, for people with disability, it’s, to be really honest, our team members feel really lucky to be in roles with us because they miss out on so many, opportunities to to really showcase their work.

00:04:14:04 – 00:04:39:00
Bianca Stern:
So as an employer, I’m sort of my benefits perspective. I’m talking around things like, attention to detail. Amazing vibes in a, in a cafe where people feel incredibly welcomed and loved when they walk into the space. we’re talking about people who might take a little bit longer to do a task, but you know that that task is going to be at 110% always.

00:04:39:00 – 00:04:50:15
Bianca Stern:
And so wouldn’t you rather that, you know, that that sort of quality compared to something else? So there are so many benefits, but it’s really, person dependent and also what the workplace is actually looking for.

00:04:51:00 – 00:05:14:05
Lisa Cox:
That’s great. That’s a great answer. There’s a massive misconception out there that all of us are incapable. And they maybe, you know, working for me don’t get better to run around to do a job. But there are there are so many other things that people with disabilities, it’s it can be advantageous, I suppose, hyper-focus, so many other things that that are often overlooked.

00:05:14:06 – 00:05:24:01
Lisa Cox:
So employers who are perhaps thinking of hiring people with disability are not sure how to go about it. What sort of recommendations would you give to them?

00:05:24:02 – 00:05:45:00
Bianca Stern:
Yeah. So I think there’s a really big misconception that hiring a person with a disability is much more difficult, takes more work. You have to be more patient and a lot more training and, and, you know, education involved in that. But realistically, if you’re thinking about your workplace anyway, without a doubt, you already have a person with disability or a person that identifies as being neurodivergent in your workplace.

00:05:45:00 – 00:06:02:06
Bianca Stern:
So what that’s telling us is that you’re already doing something to be supportive, and you’re already doing something to make a person feel safe and comfortable in your environment. So it’s basically just doing the same thing again. it’s about understanding what a person’s needs in order to be able to thrive. And so what supports are you going to put in place?

00:06:02:07 – 00:06:36:15
Bianca Stern:
Are there workplace accommodations or adjustments that you need to that you need to consider? Is it may be that the person might need a bit of a shorter shift or a longer shift on some days, or just take a quick two minute break and then, you know, get back to it, at 110%. So, from its mode benefits perspective from an employer, what an employer can be doing, they probably already doing it anyway, whether it’s English as a second language, visual recipes or resource, as you’ve already got those things, you just don’t realise that what you’re doing is actually already being inclusive.

00:06:37:01 – 00:06:58:01
Lisa Cox:
At such a great answer. And what’s, you know, inclusive for people with disabilities is actually universal design, inclusive for everyone. So whether it’s maybe a shorter work day or longer lunch break, whatever it is, I’m just make things up. But that doesn’t just help the people with disabilities over here. It helps everybody in your workforce.

00:06:58:02 – 00:07:00:09
Bianca Stern:
100%.

00:07:00:11 – 00:07:29:04
Lisa Cox:
So, there’s been a lot of talk about disability employment over many, many years by many people, and we’re always trying to improve it. But to paraphrase the disability royal commission, nothing’s happening despite years and years of government incentives, a lot of money. But APS recently launched an industry white paper about disability employment with some really great things. So could you tell us a bit more about that.

00:07:29:05 – 00:07:50:08
Bianca Stern:
100%? So we put out an, what we call our Equal Opportunity report, which is our industry white paper, a blueprint for the disability employment sector and specifically the hospitality sector as well. And so that was a paper that you can find on our website. And, I highly recommend reading where we got the voices of people with lived experience people, disability leaders.

00:07:50:08 – 00:08:15:05
Bianca Stern:
And out in our local community, leaders of big disability organisations and also hospitality employers who run very successful, large scale businesses. And we heard their voices. We listened to what they had to say. We showcase our employment pathway model in the blueprint as well. And it’s sort of our, it’s us being transparent about what we do at all things equal.

00:08:15:08 – 00:08:31:12
Bianca Stern:
And I’ll call out to the industry to say, yes, we absolutely do acknowledge that there have been barriers and challenges in the past, to employing a person with disability. And you know, what they still will be, because especially in the hospitality sector, there are just some things that we can’t change. And and that’s just the way it is.

00:08:31:14 – 00:08:56:04
Bianca Stern:
But let’s let’s read frame that and look at what are the things that we actually can change. What are the things that we can change from a mindset and attitude perspective. And then there might also be some, actual physical, you know, accessibility changes or whatever it might be. So this is a, a very detailed response to what we want to see, what what has happened in history, what we’re seeing currently, and then our calls to action for the sector.

00:08:56:04 – 00:09:18:07
Bianca Stern:
So we’re talking about, immediate responses that we can take, you know, medium to long term and then and then way further into the future. but from the white paper, our ultimate goal is to see 1100 people with disability in employment, in the hospitality sector by 2035. And so we know that all things equal is not going to open up 25 cafes.

00:09:18:10 – 00:09:41:09
Bianca Stern:
We are opening up a second cafe next year, which is really exciting. But we know that we can’t do this alone. So we want to showcase our model and be as transparent as possible so that we can actually help other organisations or other businesses to to take a small, you know, leap of faith or a little bit of learning from, from from what we’ve learned over the last four and a half years and so that they can actually be part of that goal as well.

00:09:41:09 – 00:09:56:06
Bianca Stern:
So we may not be able to achieve 1100 as a standalone, independent social enterprise, but it’s a sector 1100 is so minimal we can actually do so much more than that. That’s sort of just the baseline where we’re starting.

00:09:56:07 – 00:10:25:11
Lisa Cox:
Very Cool. And you touched on that briefly. Your last answer employment pathways. Now there’s, across the disability sector. It’s kind of easier. I wouldn’t say it’s easy, but there’s a lot of, entry level roles and low level roles, and I think, right, for some people, I don’t want to minimize that. what if someone wants to get a given up the position and work their way up the ladder, for example, what does ATE can do to help that?

00:10:25:12 – 00:10:48:13
Bianca Stern:
That’s a great question. So maybe I’ll talk a little bit about our employment pathway model and what we actually do within our organisation. So we’ve got a three step model you’ll set. You’ll see a similar model for a lot of other work integrated social enterprises like ours. So we have got a pre-employment program which is unpaid training. That’s where, a person over the age of 18 gets to experience hospitality, likely for the first time ever.

00:10:48:14 – 00:11:09:04
Bianca Stern:
They’re sort of learning their foundational skills of a OH&S, punctuality, working in a team, respecting a manager, wearing the right uniform, all those sorts of things. And from that experience, they’re doing things like taking part in cooking classes, a footy club, canteen. We’ve just done a really great pop up cafe, barista training. they’re working out.

00:11:09:06 – 00:11:30:03
Bianca Stern:
Do I actually want a job in hospitality? Am I myself self-motivated or is Mum or dad saying to me, get a job in a cafe? It’s going to be easy. We know for anyone listening that has worked in hospitality before, it is so not easy. It is actually probably the most difficult industry to work in at times.

00:11:30:04 – 00:11:56:13
Bianca Stern:
So that’s the first part. The goal of that is that our individuals, our trainees, successfully complete the program and then enter award wage employment with us straight away where they’re being paid, as soon as they’re being paid, by all things equal, it’s the industry award from the start, supported by a hospitality trainer, where they’re learning our, following our transferable skills framework, connecting with the community, either working in front of house or back of house, a couple of shifts a week, learning.

00:11:56:13 – 00:12:20:01
Bianca Stern:
And, you know, we see the most unbelievable skill development happening in all steps of our program. And then once, we’ve worked with the individual and their support network to assess that they are ready to move on from our supportive environment, we then source and work with large scale hospitality employment partners, who then employ our trainees and who now we call our graduates.

00:12:20:02 – 00:12:41:13
Bianca Stern:
And so the goal of all things equal isn’t to, to support a person for the next 20 years of their life. It’s to help them get it, help them to develop their skills in the training, and then to enter, the first step of what their career could look like. And so when we’re talking about moving from entry level roles and into, into more, so purposeful roles, where are we doing that?

00:12:41:13 – 00:13:03:07
Bianca Stern:
From our employment in our cafe to getting a job at the W in Melbourne, you know, five star hotel in the Melbourne CBD? That’s really cool. but then in saying that we, we support the trainee and the employer throughout this process to say, oh, awesome, this person is starting off as a front of house waiter. Let’s see what else can can come from this?

00:13:03:07 – 00:13:18:02
Bianca Stern:
Or can we build up the amount of shifts that they’re doing or build their responsibility? But that really has to come down to the person being that person actually wanting that. What we might find is that, someone might just be really satisfied with where they’re at. And so career progression for them just might not be of interest.

00:13:18:02 – 00:13:23:03
Bianca Stern:
So it’s really about navigating that. That was a long answer that hopefully I love.

00:13:23:04 – 00:13:47:00
Lisa Cox:
Long answer. I yeah, give them myself and long questions. And now another long answer please. You’ve done awesome work over the last five. So years since ATE has been around, and no doubt you’ve seen some incredible things, some incredible outcomes. Do you have one particular moment that stays in your mind that really says to you, this is why we do this?

00:13:47:01 – 00:14:08:09
Bianca Stern:
Well, I’m a big crier, so everything to me is emotional and everything to me is as special as the next thing. But I mean, I can tell you lots of stories about, you know, different individuals and their experiences being told from, you know, government initiatives that they weren’t, suitable to work or there were too many barriers. And now they’ve got full time jobs and all those sorts of things, and they do happen here.

00:14:08:13 – 00:14:24:05
Bianca Stern:
But actually, I think the biggest thing for all things they call lightly that has just made me the proudest person, probably in the world at a point, was us having our own food and beverage outlet at the Australian Open. And so.

00:14:24:05 – 00:14:25:12
Lisa Cox:
I love that!

00:14:25:14 – 00:14:53:01
Bianca Stern:
So to have, I think it was about ten of our trainees being paid the hospitality award with our own all things equal branded food and beverage outlet. We then had about eight of our trainees working directly with Tennis Australia, where we supported that introduction. They were working directly in customer service roles and retail roles, and then our trainees that were working in our pre-employment program, taking part in that pre-employment program, then had paid shifts in our cafe.

00:14:53:02 – 00:15:19:05
Bianca Stern:
So we sort of had this amazing cycle of people where our three step two employment pathway model was actually totally in action in on an international stage, showcasing to the entire world that people with disability can and should be working at major events where, where this shouldn’t just be some sort of taboo topic that the people working in a back room and not being, compensated appropriately for their work.

00:15:19:05 – 00:15:21:09
Bianca Stern:
So that was awesome.

00:15:21:11 – 00:15:36:05
Lisa Cox:
Love it. That is that is so cool. Now, this is a question without warning. So tell me, am I correct that, I saw that in your socials, that you do catering for corporate events and things like that. Is that correct?

00:15:36:06 – 00:15:44:06
Bianca Stern:
Very much so. We do lots of catering and we love to, get out catering out there. Absolutely.

00:15:44:07 – 00:15:55:00
Lisa Cox:
So is it, is it just a Melbourne? So I want to give you guys a plug and get all businesses to get the catering done and all things like bowls. that was it’s a just Melbourne.

00:15:55:02 – 00:16:31:03
Bianca Stern:
So yes it is just Melbourne. And we do have a bit of a radius as to how far we can we can deliver. not to say that. I mean, I didn’t think any of our brands in the mail, they’re pretty great brownie. So you can see what we can do that. But from our end, we we look at catering as advocacy when people are spending money they can spend money on, you know, supporting any caterer, making a rich person richer, or they can support all things equal, which has really great fresh food, delicious, simple, you know, easy to eat type of vegetarian pescatarian style.

00:16:31:04 – 00:16:40:10
Bianca Stern:
But the ripple effect of where their money is going is so, so powerful. So if you’re in the Melbourne CBD or anywhere around us, I’m going to plug out catering as well.

00:16:40:11 – 00:17:02:02
Lisa Cox:
Why do you just plug it? Because we talk about a lot, you know, inclusion in the workforce and inclusive media and all those things that sometimes, to whatever reason, it doesn’t quite suit an organisation to have a disability and then advertising or I don’t know why wouldn’t still. So this is another way you can be inclusive without..

00:17:02:02 – 00:17:22:00
Lisa Cox:
You know, include disability in in your workforce in some small way. Of course there are other ways to do it as well. But please, if you’re in Melbourne, get All Things Equal to cater your next event because you guys did an awesome job. Now you Bianca have just blitzed the social impact world 30 and 30 for four in the social impact category.

00:17:22:00 – 00:17:27:09
Lisa Cox:
So what does social impact means to, you?

00:17:27:10 – 00:17:56:10
Bianca Stern:
that is a great question. And I feel very humbled, about that recognition and honestly a little bit uncomfortable sometimes. But, from what I think social impact means is that I’m going to get very technical. But the term when we think about impact, impact can be anything positive, negative, powerful, whatever it might be. And so when you’ve got that social lens on it, it’s looking at everything from the lens of how can I make this world a better place?

00:17:56:10 – 00:18:25:04
Bianca Stern:
And so for me, the way, the way I look at it is what are the barriers that socially we experience and what are the opportunities and what can we be doing to break that down in the middle? so when I think of social impact, it is the challenges, the opportunities through curiosity. Break it down. Let’s make some things, more accessible, more streamlined, more available to any person that wants to have whatever the opportunity is.

00:18:25:06 – 00:18:42:03
Lisa Cox:
As an awesome answer, I do love that! And we’ve got a question that we ask all our guests. You might have had it before. What’s about you, your work? Or think the quote is unexpected? Oh, what would listeners not expect to hear?

00:18:42:04 – 00:18:59:14
Bianca Stern:
if I think about All things Equal specific thing, I think people tend to know us. For our flagship cafe in Melbourne, it’s a bright yellow cafe. Everyone knows it, but they don’t actually know about our training program that happens behind the scenes. So that’s something that I would say is potentially unexpected for people. And then on a personal note, I’ve been thinking about this a little bit.

00:19:00:00 – 00:19:23:15
Bianca Stern:
What is interesting about me, maybe something that that helped to shape a little bit about, myself and the social impact, that I want to take part in is when I was 15, I went on student exchange to Alaska, where I lived, you know, lived in regional Alaska for about four months, barely any internet, barely any technology or anything like that.

00:19:24:00 – 00:19:33:00
Bianca Stern:
And to live my life where I understood what pure joy was, that was just awesome. So, I’d say maybe that’s unexpected.

00:19:33:01 – 00:19:53:13
Lisa Cox:
That is very unexpected. And I’m incredibly jealous because that sounds really awesome. Oh, well, I don’t know about no internet. I wouldn’t be okay these days. I used to be okay with that. Yeah. So where can people find about All Things Equal? Give you a yellow cafe, a plug? All Things Equal Cafe.

00:19:53:13 – 00:20:03:11
Lisa Cox:
If you’re in Melbourne, get down to it. I will be on my next trip, but tell us about the cafe, website where we can look for catering, details, all that.

00:20:03:12 – 00:20:22:14
Bianca Stern:
Yeah. So, We are. Our cafe is in Balaclava, so if you’re in the area, absolutely. Come visit us. Or open Sundays to Fridays. We’re closed on Saturdays. but follow us on socials, @allthingsequal.org.au today you where you can really understand a bit more about our journey, our mission, our food offering, all those sorts of things.

00:20:23:00 – 00:20:30:05
Bianca Stern:
And then our website is allthingseuall.com.au today you where you can also learn more about us and order catering directly that way.

00:20:30:06 – 00:20:48:08
Lisa Cox:
Awesome. Thank you Bianca, thank you very much for all of that. I hope people got something out of that. And Bianca will be our last guest on this. But we have some exciting new things coming in. A recap of all previous episodes, we will hear more about that in the future. It’s a bit of a secret at the moment, but stay tuned.

00:20:48:11 – 00:20:59:01
Lisa Cox:
Bianca, you’ve taught us a few things about ATE, but could you, I suppose, expand on that a little bit? How did you come up with the idea and tell us how to bequest?

00:20:59:03 – 00:21:19:04
Bianca Stern:
Yeah, so so it’s not me. It’s it’s a it was a large group of, really passionate people who ultimately became our all things board. But our founder, his name is Jonathan. He has a daughter, Tully, who was finishing school at a special school called Giant Steps. And Jonathan knew that Tully was, her best self in the kitchen.

00:21:19:04 – 00:21:37:09
Bianca Stern:
That was the place that she thrived. She’s an amazing baker still to this day, and he wanted to find some opportunities for her to be able to work and be paid appropriately for her work. So he did a whole lot of research and essentially found, would you be no surprise to anybody that nothing really existed to support people, to support Tully and people like Tully?

00:21:37:10 – 00:22:00:13
Bianca Stern:
And so that’s where he decided, okay, well, if I want to create something tailored to her, I need to do it myself. And so that was essentially the reason why All Things Equal started to date. We have supported, I think we’ve actually reached higher than this now, but 31 people with disability into award wage employment. We’ve paid over $575,000 in award wages.

00:22:00:14 – 00:22:21:14
Bianca Stern:
We’ve supported 11 of our trainees to transition out into more open employment opportunities. And we are having some amazing conversations with people all around the sector about what we can be doing better and, how we can really start to change these, mindsets and, you know, these misconceptions.

00:22:21:15 – 00:22:41:02
Lisa Cox:
So cool. And what would you say..I don’t know if you can think of one, another questions without notice. But in terms of your biggest, success story, so success is different for everyone. So I don’t want to, imply that success can only be the one way but you mentioned before.

00:22:41:02 – 00:22:48:06
Lisa Cox:
There was, an ex employee who ended up working at W Melbourne. Is that correct?

00:22:48:07 – 00:23:16:14
Bianca Stern:
So we have got two trainees currently that are working at the W Melbourne, where they are working in one of the cafes. They’re very well respected cafe. And these two or things equal graduates went through our program. One of our the trainees actually was quite unsure about what he wanted to do when he finished school. Through taking part in all things school, he decided that hospitality was very much an area of interest for him.

00:23:16:15 – 00:23:40:11
Bianca Stern:
He then decided to study hospitality at Tafe, where he actually won the award for the most outstanding student in that course. Keep in mind, this was someone that had absolutely no idea what he wanted to do and really felt lost for that. To the most outstanding student to now working at the Melbourne. So we want to talk about pretty cool, progression and pretty cool opportunities for people.

00:23:40:12 – 00:23:43:02
Bianca Stern:
I’d say that’s it. That’s a that’s a great one.

00:23:43:03 – 00:24:05:01
Lisa Cox:
That is very cool, very cool. But like you said, not everyone wants to progress to other things. And that’s perfectly fine as well. But cycles cycle only, so there are so many benefits in place for disability. But could we break that down a bit. So look at the employees, not just the staff, but also the general community members who come to a draw.

00:24:05:01 – 00:24:07:12
Lisa Cox:
And I said by one of their employees.

00:24:07:13 – 00:24:32:04
Bianca Stern:
Yeah, I love that. So our cafe is the perfect example of showcasing what is possible. So you’ve got a customer who walks in who has no idea about all things equal. They’ve just happened to have a work meeting. They’re they’re being served by a person with disability. And maybe they had never even interacted with a person with disability, or never even remotely considered that that person was capable of getting a job to being served.

00:24:32:04 – 00:24:59:01
Bianca Stern:
Having amazing customer service, an amazing dish served to them. Great coffee. The the whole process is seamless and they leave. What are they doing when they go back to their workplace side of that day? What are they thinking about? What are they what what has changed in their mind around people with disabilities, what they are capable of and the types of meaningful what what meaningful roles, actually, what that actually means.

00:24:59:02 – 00:25:25:13
Bianca Stern:
So we see that happen with customers all the time. And then I think, I mean, I have ADHD myself. I don’t identify as having a disability, but for someone like myself to work with such a diverse group of people with such different brains, who all have so much to add to our workplace in different ways, whether it’s in our cafe, in our pre-employment program, or even in our office, you get to actually have more innovation.

00:25:25:15 – 00:25:47:06
Bianca Stern:
You see more interesting things come to life. You see people being challenged in different ways and definitely challenging my thinking. If it comes down to my communication style or how I was planning to approach something, having diversity of brains and having diversity of the way people do things is, in my opinion, an absolute no brainer for any workplace.

00:25:47:06 – 00:25:51:01
Bianca Stern:
But I guarantee you you’ve really got those brains in your workplace.

00:25:51:02 – 00:26:15:02
Lisa Cox:
Yeah, that’s what the data tells us. There’s already so many people with disabilities who perhaps don’t look like made a big wheelchair, but they’re just choosing not to disclose represent an article in time. But, yeah, it’s not the individual’s responsibility to disclose or not disclose. It’s up to the workplace to create a psychologically safe environment for them.

00:26:15:02 – 00:26:34:01
Lisa Cox:
But I love that you have that co-design element. This isn’t just an organisation for disabled people, but it’s and what we say disabled also covering neurodivergent people there as well. So they may not identify, like you said, as as disabled. But it’s a real it’s a real co-design. And that’s that’s great.

00:26:34:02 – 00:26:56:11
Bianca Stern:
Agreed. And I totally agree. And I also think that has to come from a total top down approach and bottom up. So talking about at All Things equal board, we have got several people on our board that identify as having a disability to our senior leadership team, to our staff members and the cafe managers, trainees, support staff.

00:26:56:13 – 00:27:01:09
Bianca Stern:
We say that across our entire network of team.

00:27:01:10 – 00:27:26:01
Lisa Cox:
Brilliant that’s really really good to know, that you’ve got people through through all levels at All Things Equal.

Lisa Cox: Thanks for listening to that was unexpected. If you liked what you heard and you want to hit more, then hit subscribe wherever you get your fix. Have any questions or topics that you’d love for us to tackle? Great email podcast at Young care.com that are you!

00:27:26:01 – 00:27:53:00
Lisa Cox:
We can’t wait to hear from you. Check it out. Show notes for transcripts, video recordings and find out more about our guests plus the useful resources they share. You can reach us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn at young Hours. Let’s not forget, an inclusive community is everyone’s business, so let’s keep working together to break down barriers and smash some stereotypes.

Resources:
https://www.allthingsequal.com.au/   / allthingsequal.org.au     / allthingsequal.org.au  
  / bianca-stern-33a026181   @allthingsequa

That Was Unexpected-andrewHager&Julie

Ben: [00:00:00] Hey listeners, welcome to another episode of That Was Unexpected. In previous episodes, we’ve touched on accessible travel with our adventurous friend, Lindsay Knott Vacate, CEO, Haley Brown and Susan Wheeldon from Airbnb. But there’s so much more ground we can cover when it comes to the wonderful world of travel.

So today we’ll be chatting with co-founder of Supported Travel Experiences, Andrew Hager, and Julie Jones, executive editor of Travel Without Limits Magazine. Welcome to the pod everyone. Andrew is a co-founder of Supported Travel Experiences with a professional career spanning over two decades in executive consulting and advisory roles. Andrew has over 15 years experience in the travel and tourism sector and is passionate about customer experience design, and improving outcomes for people with disabilities.

Julie has decades of experience traveling with her son Braeden, [00:01:00] who lives with cerebral palsy. Her determination to make the world more accessible for him.

Has led to a successful blog, a massive online community, and now a travel magazine addressing the specific needs of travelers with disabilities.

Lisa Cox: Are you sick of the same old disability stereotypes story? We were too so we did something about it. Welcome to that was Unexpected. The Disability lifestyle podcast for everyone.

Brought to you by Youngcare and hosted by me, Lisa Cox. Join our amazing guest. As we delve into topics, they don’t often hit the headlines. So let’s do this. Prepare for the unexpected if your low vision like me, or have other accessibility requirements. Check out our show notes. Before we get started, we’d like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we record.

We pay respect to the elders past, present and emerging.

Hey [00:02:00] everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. We are doing another episode today on travel, because isn’t that what we all want to do skip out on our jobs and travel and do nothing else. Okay. That’s not realistic. But today we’ve got two awesome guests who you’ve heard a little bit about now, Julie, so great to speak with you.

I’ve been following all your work for years because even though I’m disabled, I still wanna travel. And so do so many other people with disabilities. Now you’ve got a travel magazine, you’ve got a great community. Your son was the catalyst for your inclusive travel journey.

Could you tell us some more about that?

Julie Jones: Sure, it’s lovely to be here. I was a traveler when I was young. My parents were a little ahead of the curve and they took me traveling for six months to Europe when I was a child. And so that really gave me a absolute passion for travel. And I always imagined doing the same thing with our children.

So when Braeden was born with a disability, it threw a curve ball to us [00:03:00] and we sort of thought, oh, well that’s the end of our travel dreams. But then I guess over time we realized actually we can do this. We need this and it’ll be great for the kids. And it was really a lack of information that was the catalyst for everything. Because when we did a big trip to the US for the first time with my son, I said to my husband, it feels like we’re the first people landing on the moon. Like there’s just no information and we can’t be the only people traveling with a loved one with a disability. And it just seemed ridiculous. Like in the era of, I guess the early stages of the internet, ’cause Braeden’s 29 now.

So there just wasn’t very much out there. So that was really the catalyst for us starting everything.

Lisa Cox: Awesome. And so our listeners have an idea of what you’re talking or who you’re talking about rather. Everybody’s different with the disabilities, some people can walk, etcetera. So what sort of access requirements does Braeden have?

Julie Jones: Uh, Braeden uses a wheelchair full time. He travels with a manual wheelchair [00:04:00] ’cause we find that’s much easier. And he does not have any problem with being pushed. He quite likes it to be honest. And he can self propel when he needs to. He needs help with transfers, but he can do a standing transfer. And we need to travel with things like portable commode chair and other equipment just to make sure that when we do travel we have things that we need when we’re away from home.

Lisa Cox: Okay, cool. So much like one of our other guests, Lindsay, who was on a little while ago. You’ve got your suitcase full of your clothes and then there’s a huge haul of extra equipment that comes along with you.

Julie Jones: Exactly. Because you just can’t guarantee that when you get somewhere, the setup is gonna suit your needs.

So I think it’s already a little outta your comfort zone to be away from home when you have such specific needs. So it’s important to take what you can with you.

Lisa Cox: Yeah. Now Andrew, you started Supported Travel Experiences in 2020. You’ve helped people domestically, internationally [00:05:00] see the world.

What motivated you to do that?

Andrew Hagar: Thanks, Lisa. It’s an interesting story. So my business partner and I purchased a travel agency that wasn’t a disability travel agency, and we purchased that in, well, we took over in November, 2019. Three, four months before COVID. So the worst possible time you could buy a travel agency.

And as we were going through COVID, my business partner was, working part-time for a large consulting firm at the time still. He was working in their accessible infrastructure space. So he was traveling fairly regularly. One of his team members is an ex Paralympian and a wheelchair user.

He was traveling with him. On about three or four occasions, they would face issues when they were traveling. So in some cases they would check into a hotel room that the internal travel team who booked it as the accessible room and find it wasn’t accessible. And at 10 o’clock at night, they’re having to find another hotel room.

In other cases, the airline wasn’t aware of the wheelchair requirement. So, my business partner came back to me. I do have a travel background, he doesn’t. Whilst I don’t have a disability, my partner is vision impaired with offset vision. My son is autistic, so I’m well versed to the [00:06:00] challenges that people face traveling.

And my business partner came to me and said, look is there anyone in the travel space that’s specializing in helping people with extra needs or disabilities travel? A nd there really wasn’t. So there’s a few good players that do similar things, and there’s some tours that you could take. But, if you want to go travel the world and as part of that travel, you need requirements, like you need some support , or if you need an electric bed or you need hoist, you can’t walk into a regular travel agency and do that.

So we looked at it and we felt that there’s definitely need in there, to help people. We started talking to the disability sector during COVID saying, look, we think there’s an offering here. We think we can help, if we provide this type of service. And we got some feedback around what would and wouldn’t work.

And, we started from there. So, during COVID, obviously our borders were closed. We started doing domestic trips, so helping people just travel within the country or within the states, depending on where they were able to travel, and expanded from there. So the borders opened. We started doing outbound and the same service offering, so providing everything that people need when they’re traveling.

Then recently about 12 months ago, we’ve [00:07:00] actually started an inbound business, which is about helping people from overseas come into Australia. I guess it wasn’t something we intended to start, it actually grew from COVID. And it’s something we’re really, really passionate about and, it’s very rewarding helping healthy people travel.

Lisa Cox: That’s really cool. And you’re probably one of the only businesses that has grown from COVID because I think it had disastrous effects across the tourism industry. And I love also that you are completely engaged with the disability community. It’s not just this thing you are doing for them.

You are all entwined with us. And that’s fantastic.

Andrew Hagar: Yeah. And we’re really trying to advocate for the disability sector as well. So we are talking to airlines, we’re talking to suppliers about how. If they can improve their accessibility, that makes it easier for people to travel, ’cause, it can be challenging.

and how do we advocate for people.

Lisa Cox: That’s really good to hear because a nice trip is one thing and posting some pics on Instagram, but the real issues come at the policy end and all of those sorts of things that you are working on. Which don’t make pretty pictures on social media, but [00:08:00] they’re sorts of things that need to change to make the world more accessible to us.

Now, Julie, you do some really great work and talk about finding a way around the world without being in tricky situations so that it’s open to us.

What are some of the tricky situations that you and your family find yourselves in?

Julie Jones: I think it’s just the fact that there’s not enough information out there. Information is power. And I just remember one trip we were doing to tropical North Queensland who have done an amazing job since in providing accessible accommodation.

But at the time, many years ago, we were looking for an apartment. I remember finding, I thought I had finally found the perfect place and I rang the property and I said, I just want to double check that there are no stairs. And she said, nope, no stairs. We have a lift. And I said, so there’s no stairs at all, even to the lift.

Oh, there’s just a few stairs to the lift. So it’s that kind of, you know, lack of information. Because, yes, we could have bumped Braeden’s wheelchair up the four stairs or [00:09:00] whatever. But realistically every time you come in and out of the property, it’s extra strain on our body and not as comfortable for him, and it’s just that lack of understanding.

You know, people thinking that there’s a one size fits all for disability is one of the great challenges because it’s worked for one person in a wheelchair or with certain needs that might work for you, but that’s not the case. You know, Braeden prefers a bath to a shower as an example. He would be very unusual in that, I guess, wheelchair community in probably wanting a bath instead of a shower.

But he can manage that. So I think it’s, yeah, perceptions from the community is one of the challenges, and that’s even within the disability community. I will say, sometimes I will post something on Facebook and people will say, I can’t afford that, and everyone with a disability is on the Disability Support Pension, well that’s not true.

I have people that, you know, want five star accommodation. So we all have to understand that like any other sector of our community, the disability community [00:10:00] has various needs. So, information is power and the more information people can provide us with the less tricky situations we’ll find.

Lisa Cox: That’s an important point you raise about us all being different. A holiday for some people might be the hotel down the road, but for others that might be the first class trip to Europe. But that’s just like the non-disabled community. Everybody’s different. And Andrew, you deal with all sorts of people with all sorts of disabilities, different goals for holidays.

Some people, I don’t know why, wanna do bungey jumping, crazy, stuff like that. But then there are other people who perhaps wanna do completely different things. How do you and your colleagues work around those different goals?

Speaker 4: Yeah, we really work with them and their support network, if they have that support network, to break it down.

So we go to a lot of detail to try and understand what they wanna achieve, so what their goals look like. What’s a fantastic holiday look like? What’s an absolute must have and nice to haves. Then we break that down in terms of, okay, how do we manage [00:11:00] that?

So what support do you need when you’re actually achieving that? So we work a lot with the support teams. So whether it’s occupational therapists or support workers or family or friends or whatever that may be, to actually say, okay, how does this work in daily life? Or what sort of support do you need when you’re actually traveling?

And then we just go off and arrange that for them. Breaking it down to really understand the details of the person travelling. Because everyone’s so unique in this space. You know, you’ve heard saying if you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism, like everyone’s really different.

So we need to hear it from the customer. We need to hear it from their network, as to how we can help them.

Lisa Cox: Okay. Julie, I think you’ve probably touched on this before with some of your other answers, but for those of us who are traveling with disabilities, what are some of the key things for you in terms of, this is how I get around it, or these are the ways I overcome that massive travel obstacle.

Julie Jones: I think a little bit like Andrew said, you have to really work out what your priorities are, and I think for us it was really, [00:12:00] we started local. So we worked out what made a good holiday for us. What were the things that were really important to us when we traveled. And what equipment we couldn’t, couldn’t do without.

‘Cause that’s super important too. Because the more stuff you take with you, the bigger the burden really, to be honest. As much as I say, take what you need, that can also become a burden when you’re trying to get accessible taxis or just, you know, try and navigate your way around airports and things like that. So I think it’s super important to work that out.

And then I think having a game plan before you even travel. So working out if you are traveling overseas. And we take a repair kit for my son’s wheelchair basic repair kit. So we talk to his wheelchair supplier and ask for what we might need if something happened.

We take that with us, but then also to know if you have, say, a power wheelchair, what would happen? Like where if you were try traveling to say New Zealand, where could you get that repaired? If you’ve got medical needs, what hospital would be close by. So we had a case last year of Braeden having concussion [00:13:00] and it was probably the first time I hadn’t looked in the hotel compendium when we arrived to check that out.

But I think those sorts of things, if you’re traveling with somebody that’s medically fragile, just having a bit of a game plan ahead of time and working things out. Doing things like putting air tags in your wheelchair or an Android equivalent in your luggage. Like really thinking through worst case scenarios and making sure you have a plan for it.

Lisa Cox: That’s really great advice for people who do want to get out. So of all the traveling you’ve done, give a shout out to any hotel who do have really good setups. Because we wanna use this platform to promote businesses who are doing good jobs as well as not just shitting on the ones who are doing a bad job, but promoting the businesses who are doing a good job.

Julie Jones: I’d say for me, Lake Mac holiday parks, which is in New South Wales (about an hour and a half from Sydney). I was just in awe of the extent that they had gone to. The manager of the holiday parks had just [00:14:00] gone to such a lot of effort to work out what would make a good accessible cabin. The accessible cabins would’ve cost a lot more, but when I spoke to him, a period of time afterwards, he said the return on revenue had been a lot quicker, on those accessible cabins, which I thought was a really good business model for people to look at. That yes, it did cost more, but they had respite places and other places booking it out because it was such good accessible accommodation.

So what made it good accessible accommodation? The cabin was accessible. They had FOB entry, so it wasn’t a case of a heavy door. They had a kitchen, which we love self-catering facilities ’cause it makes you travel dollar travel, you know, further. And it also means if you have dietary requirements, you’ve got something there that you can just do. But they had the stove top and all the cupboards go higher and lower so they electronically could be raised to accommodate a wheelchair. Accessible bathroom. They had a view, Lisa, they actually had a view. [00:15:00] No garbage bins, no back alley, no, you know, revolting view. It actually had water views, so the accessible accommodation was just as good as everyone elses. Probably better in fact. The facilities around the park were really accessible as well, which was great. And they built upon that. So they then put in accessible playground features. They put in a water wheelchair and a ramp to the pool, which was great.

And then probably as a knock-on effect, I’m not a hundred percent sure, but years later, they opened up an accessible boardwalk. So you could literally wheel out the door of your accessible accommodation, which was already beautiful to a regular walkway that was there, and then join this accessible boardwalk, which was just lovely.

So that would be as far as mainstream accommodation that I have seen, that would be my top pick.

Lisa Cox: Brilliant. Thanks for sharing that. And for our listeners who don’t know why I was being sarcastic before and had [00:16:00] a reaction. The accessible accommodation is usually on the ground floor facing the car park or garbage bins or something like that.

So the idea that people with disabilities would want a view is astounding. Breaking news.

Julie Jones: You know, I’ve also broken down a part of that when I’ve met with hotel managers in that people give bad TripAdvisor reviews if they’re given accessible accommodation and they don’t need it. So within the hotel industry, apparently there is just this backlash with guests if they get the accessible accommodation.

And I heard this from somebody in Melbourne and I was astounded because I was not traveling with my son and I was staying in one of their non-accessible rooms, which was tiny. And I went to the accessible room and it was just like huge. And it was like, who would complain about this? Just because there’s a couple of grab rails in here. But apparently people see it as though they’ve got a downgrade in their accommodation.

Lisa Cox: I know people who’ve [00:17:00] also, they’re not disabled, but have been put in the accessible rooms and like, look at all this space. Thank you very much. They think they’ve been upgraded. But anyway, Andrew, now we can hear so many bad stories about airlines, accommodation, everything like that.

Rightfully so. When one poster has a bad experience they take to social media and that goes viral. But what are , some good experiences that you’ve had?

Andrew Hagar: Uh, look, we’ve had good and bad experiences with the airlines. We often find with the airlines that we work with, their accessible teams.

But that information doesn’t necessarily translate through to the ground staff. The training doesn’t always work. But we’ve had some fantastic experiences as well. So, um, my experience and in traveling with my partner who is visually impaired, everyone at the airlines and everyone at the airports are really trying to go out of their way to assist.

So they’re very friendly, they’re very helpful. Sometimes it’s the procedures that they have to follow that can be challenging. We’ve had clients have some amazing success stories. We had someone come to us. They [00:18:00] were a wheelchair user. They couldn’t speak. They had not complete visual impairment, but they were visually impaired as well.

And they had a goal to travel to Africa and do an African safari, and they came to us and said, can you make it happen? It’s not an easy one. So we were able to arrange an accessible safari in Africa for him, and he was an artist.

So he wanted to go over there and draw. And he went with a, photographer and a support team. I think it was a 10 or 11 day, completely accessible safari in an accessible vehicle, accessible glamping, and just had the most amazing time. And, you know, it’s that sort of experience that we wanna be able to facilitate for people that otherwise wouldn’t be able to do it.

Lisa Cox: That’s incredible. I didn’t think, I mean, I, I assumed it was probably possible, but thought of having to organize all of that just overwhelms me, makes me feel a bit ill. And so that’s, that’s the sort of thing that you guys take care of, is it?

Andrew Hagar: Yeah, absolutely. And that feeling is something a lot of people have and it puts people off traveling.

And to be honest, for people without disabilities organizing travel could be overwhelming. It can be really difficult and you add the complication of [00:19:00] I’ve got these accessible needs that I need to manage when I’m traveling. And people otherwise just don’t do it. And you know, our view is they’re missing out on experiencing some amazing parts of the world.

Lisa Cox: Oh, for sure. And you mentioned previously the Qantas. Accessibility Board, . Tell us a bit more about that.

Andrew Hagar: Yeah, they approached us a little while ago to get some feedback into their accessibility.

Which is really about how do they improve accessibility as an airline. We’re talking to Virgin as well about the same thing. Our experience with both airlines is they have the fantastic intentions to improve accessibility but they’re very large organizations and their ability to change is not quick.

That said, they are making improvements. I know Virgin just announced recently that in Adelaide Airport you can experience going through the airport , the security process, and even actually boarding the plane without actually having to fly. So yeah, they call it a try before you buy.

So if you’ve got kids with autism or if you’re a wheelchair user, what does that look like? And is air travel for you? So you can experience that. So there are things like that, [00:20:00] that the airlines are trying to do . But that said, it is still a significant challenge, for people with disabilities.

Lisa Cox: Question for both of you, depending on who’s got the experience in this? Selfishly, I’m asking for myself because I wanna travel overseas.

So one of my biggest, biggest fears about traveling overseas is that it’s hard enough in Australia, when you need to find an accessable toilet or a lift or something like that. But when there’s a language barrier, that’s a real problem. So I tend to stick to the English speaking countries or in Australia, and that’s great, but not great in some ways.

Julie Jones: Translate is your absolute best friend I found in Japan. That was our best friend. And I think also making sure you’re aware of the different terminology in different countries. So in Japan for example, they refer to their accessible rooms either as barrier free or universal design.

In the US they have a variety of categories, so they refer to them [00:21:00] as ADA Rooms, which is Americans with Disability Act, and they will have some ADA rooms which have bathtub with a seat over the bathtub. So like a bench that goes over the bathtub and the height adjustable shower. So you have to be quite specific and say ADA roll in.

And that’s even in another English speaking country. So I think it’s really important to sort of familiarize yourself with that. But I would also say that some of the non-English speaking countries may not also have the same infrastructure in place that you would get in some of the other countries too.

So it depends on your needs as to whether that suits you as a traveler, I think.

Lisa Cox: Pre-disability I used to camp and backpack and do all the stuff like staying in cheap hostels, but that was accessible for me because I was walking and it was no worries.

But these days, unfortunately, I can’t get off the beaten track per se, and I have to stick more so [00:22:00] in the touristy areas, which isn’t as much fun as taking a motorbike up the back hills of Thailand or something. So are there countries, I was going to ask what your favorite destination is, but specifically countries where you can get away from the concrete footpaths, but still get the accessible experience.

Julie Jones: I would say that we had an incredible experience in Fiji and my husband thought I was absolutely off my nut suggesting it as a destination. But he and I had traveled there many times when I worked in the travel industry and I was desperate to take my kids there.

And I knew that my son, Braeden, would just be part of the village in Fiji. I knew he would love the Fijian people, and I will say that we didn’t wanna stay in Denarau, which is probably the safest place to say if you are traveling and you have high support needs. But Braeden can do a standing transfer.

So it was a case for us of, let’s see how far we can push this adventure. And it really came down to the Fijian people. [00:23:00] They don’t have the infrastructure, but they have the will to make sure nobody’s left behind. So it depends on how comfortable you are, I guess. They were picking Braeden up and taking him up on boats and lifting his wheelchair and doing all the rest of it.

But we found Fiji incredible and I put a lot of time into researching, which I think is always key and planning ahead. And I emailed the different operators and said, this is my son’s situation. Would you be happy for him to be a part of a tour? So we did a quad biking tour as an example where he doubled with my husband on the quad bike and they said, come in ahead of the tour and we’ll see. So they did a lap around the streets of Fiji. We went prepared with a non-slip mat to go under his bottom and an occy to strap him to the bike with. So we kind of went prepared with what we thought might make it work, and they said, we just wanna see him on the bike first.

So it’s a case of sometimes those off the beaten places, you know, do work. But I will say accessible toilets very hard to find. Even at [00:24:00] places where we went for, you know, a day tour, it was really hard. We had to just, you know, manage.

Lisa Cox: That’s one of the reasons I’m terrified of going back to Thailand with disabilities because you know how it works. Andrew, what are some of your favorite destinations that you’ve helped clients get to?

Andrew Hagar: One of my favorites is Greece. Yeah. So we travel to the Greek Islands. I would say from accessibility point of view, Athens has its challenges. Getting around Athens and even with my partner, the streets are not stable, so that could be a challenge.

But the Greek Islands surprisingly, or at least the ones I’ve traveled to, are actually reasonably good. I know Greece in the last sort of five years, it made I think it was 220 beaches wheelchair accessible. So there are still some challenges there, and you need to, you need to understand that, but it’s, it’s definitely a favorite destination of mine.

I love Europe. We travel through Europe fairly regularly. Again, it has some challenges, but we’ve actually been able to arrange some amazing itineraries through Europe for people with power wheelchairs in small towns that you wouldn’t [00:25:00] otherwise think is possible.

You just need to, as Julie was saying earlier, information is critical. You need to know ahead of time what can work and what doesn’t work. But I guess that’s the information we’re trying to provide people. Um, but yeah. Favorite destination for me would be Greece.

Um. Uh, US as well. I’ve travelled regularly to the US through some of the national forests and some of those are actually fairly accessible as well. So yeah, there’s a lot of options for people.

Lisa Cox: Are there any accessible bush walk trails here in Australia?

Andrew Hagar: Yeah, there’s one, I was actually talking to a supplier the other day up in 1770. So they offer a accessible, sort of walking experience. They’ve got an accessible trail but they’ve also partnered with a local company up there that provide accessible glamping services.

The tent setups are all accessible and the people that run that are actually registered support workers and carers, so they can actually provide the support work and care if you need that as well.

Lisa Cox: They, they get it. Oh, that’s so good to know about because I miss the camping stuff and [00:26:00] having a few trees around and things like that.

So we’ve asked about your favorite destinations, but what in your opinion is completely overhyped and just don’t even bother, Julie?

Julie Jones: I wouldn’t say don’t bother, but I’d say city travel is probably a little over hyped because it is safer.

I will say the last year we did a trip to Western Australia. We were hosted for a trip to Western Australia when we traveled from Exmouth to Perth, and we’d been wanting to go there for ages and we had been thinking, well, without traveling with our own beach wheelchair, how are we gonna do it?

And I had this whole sort of preconceived idea, it wasn’t gonna be manageable unless we could build our own beach wheelchair that could travel in a suitcase. So my husband had actually started that process and then we received the itinerary. And I was surprised at how many places actually had facilities for access.

So places like Turquoise Bay. They had a beach wheelchair. The Rangers would deliver it to you at the beach. You couldn’t [00:27:00] get more remote. Monkey Meyer. They had the most incredible accessible villa with two bedrooms, water views, and then they have got a beach wheelchair to do the dolphin experience, and they should be very soon getting beach matting as well to get down to the water.

Uluru is gorgeous and it actually has quite good accessible infrastructure in place. So yeah, I think they’ve got accessible accommodation. Their buses, you can remain in your wheelchair if you want to go to the tours. We managed Field of Light and Sounds of Silence Dinner. Tricky ’cause of the sand, obviously, but we did manage it.

I think sometimes just getting out and enjoying nature. I see through my community there is a lot of desire for nature based and as you were saying before, nature trails. All those sorts of things because we’re so used to the accessible walk being, you know, sort of a hundred meters of concrete and then all the best stuff is where you see people heading off [00:28:00] to. It’s like, I just wanna go there too, you know?

Lisa Cox: So tips from both of you about people looking for accessible travel from your different points of view as a person with disabilities or a carer of someone with disabilities, and as someone who organizes travel, what would your top tips be?

Andrew Hagar: A couple for me. Obviously I’m biased but I would say work with a trusted travel agent. One that knows your circumstances, knows your requirements, and organize that. And the reason I say that is they are there to assist you all the way through the trip so they can do things like travel agents, arrange things in advance, but if something does go wrong…

a travel agent can help you in those situations, so they are there to assist you. So, I mean, that’s a bit of a bias, but that will be one tip. But the other tip I would say is, and I think we mentioned it earlier, if you’re overwhelmed, start small.

Your first trip doesn’t need to be a four week trip through Europe. You can go to a local town. You can hop on a plane to travel to another city in Australia for three or four nights. See what works for you, see what doesn’t work for you, and then build up to some of those bigger trips. Find out [00:29:00] what support you need, as Julie was saying, what equipment do you really have to have and what can you potentially leave behind to make things easier. Start small and build up to some of those bigger trips.

Lisa Cox: Yeah, great idea. And correct me if I’m wrong, but your company, if I fly to a destination. I need to get to a hotel. Sometimes both of them can be accessible, but it’s a transport in between. Can you sort that out too?

Andrew Hagar: Yeah, we can. So we can do a range of things so we can have someone meet you at the airport to assist you. We can get access to wheelchair accessible vehicles and vans. So we work with you to understand can you self transfer to a seat, for example, do you need to remain seated in the wheelchair when you travel? And then we basically work with our transport companies globally to provide that sort of service for you.

And as I said, if you do have the extra support with someone to meet you there and assist you, we can arrange that as well.

Lisa Cox: Excellent. And what about you, Julie?

Julie Jones: I would say no question is too silly. Don’t ever feel that you can’t ask a question. And I would also say, I agree. I mean, I used to work in the travel industry, so working with a travel agent is a lovely safety net [00:30:00] and a lovely way of having things researched for you.

If you are researching yourself, I would say research, plan, research, ask questions. If you are booking a hotel, I would say make sure you don’t ring there. Say you’re booking a Sheraton or an Intercontinental, don’t book there. Don’t ring their main reservations number ’cause it could be a toll free number.

You might be ringing from Australia for a hotel in Queensland and in fact they are in Hawaii answering the call so they don’t know that property intimately. I would say make a little list of the things that you really need, say in a hotel room, particularly if you’re a wheelchair user. If you need clearance under the bed for a hoist, that’s really important.

When I’m write my reviews now of hotels, I’ve taken into consideration the things that my readers have told me they need to know. So if they’re traveling with a commode chair that goes over the top of the toilet, they need to know the height of the toilet from, you know, to the pan and to the seat, and that kind of information they need to know if there’s a [00:31:00] shower bench. Some of my readers need a shower chair rather than a shower bench because they need their arms to actually press push up through to, to get up. And they can’t do that on a shower bench. Look for photos, YouTube videos. Um, we might be all a little cynical about TikTok, but a lot of people do walkthroughs.

Um, certainly when I do a review of a hotel, I do video because I think video gives you a much better spatial awareness of a room. So really look for that information and just arm yourself with as much as you can. Word of mouth in the disability community is incredible. People can’t wait to say when something’s been great, and also can’t wait to say when something has been bad.

I would say with the bad and even with the good just remember again that all needs are different. What hasn’t worked for you? We went to Rottnest Island. It was fantastic for us, but I had several readers say it didn’t work for them. You know, Rottnest Island had a changing places bathroom. It had a beach wheelchair. It had [00:32:00] beach matting. We had a buggy we could get around with for the day. It worked fine for us, but other people had said for them it hadn’t worked. So just always take that into consideration when you’re hearing the good and the bad.

And when you see bad press, don’t let it put you off. Because I will say click bait is what you know every media outlet wants. They want you clicking through to their website because those clicks means that they earn more money. So yes, there are bad stories, but what we tend to see is the best, the sobby story that’s supposed to pull at your heartstrings about a person with a disability.

And we see the absolute worst where somebody’s had to, you know, haul themselves up the stairs of an aircraft because there’s been no lift to get them there. So it’s really important to keep that in mind.

Lisa Cox: That’s right. There’s a huge range of us. Some are, you know, either end of that spectrum, but there’s a big fat chunk of us in the middle who just go about life.

Now, I normally finish this by asking all of our guests what about themselves is [00:33:00] unexpected, but I’ll put a traveler spin on this. So what about you or your travels has been most unexpected?

Julie Jones: I think Fiji was the most unexpected.

The fact that the Fijian people were so welcoming and they went to such great lengths to make sure Braeden could be included. We did a electric bike track over old Plantation Railway, and we went to look at it ahead of time and said, oh, Braeden’s feet will be dangling. We’ve taken occy straps and the non-slip matting and everything else, and we said, could we use that polystyrene box to put under his feet to make it easier?

And by the time we went back for our actual tour they had built a wooden bench like a wooden stool to put under his feet. We were the only people that turned up for that tour that day because it was raining and it was, I think, a good sort of example for operators too, that putting in the effort, is just really rewarding.

Not just from the fact that Braeden could do it, but also because we were so keen to do it. A bit of rain wasn’t putting us off. So [00:34:00] I think tour operators really do need to understand not just the good that you can do by being accessible and welcoming people with disability is worthwhile, but also from a monetary point of view, would you turn down any other business?

I suggest you would say no. And when you turn down, you know Braeden, you’re turning down four family members, so that’s financially viable as well. That was a bit of a tangent. I’m sorry.

Lisa Cox: Feel free to go on tangents any time. I do it all the time. In another podcast, we spoke to one of the guests about just that sort of the business case for it, and I think the example I gave was going somewhere after a conference and there were 10 of us, obviously the only person with disabilities.

So it wasn’t just me that you are putting in that lift or that accessibility for it was the other people as well.

Now Andrew, what about you? What’s been most unexpected in all of your years of travel?

Andrew Hagar: The thing I love about travel is just immersing yourself in a local experience so you wouldn’t otherwise know or [00:35:00] expect.

And, um, a story I reflect back on and it wasn’t accessible. I better preface that, but I was looking after the tourism side of Queensland Rail for a while. They’ve got a train that runs between Normanton and Croyden in the Gulf up north, in Queensland.

And I was there hosting, I think Channel Seven travel show that were filming the train. I was there hosting it and we spent the day filming and the producer and the camera man and I were sitting outside the hotel at the evening and a guy came up to us and said, um, we sort of sitting there and there’s a helicopter at the back. He came up to us and said, would you like to go up in the helicopter and we looked at him and said, aren’t you the guy that owns the hotel. And he said, yeah, yeah, but I do chopper rides.

So we get into this helicopter and it had no doors at all. So you are strapped in. And he went high. I dunno if you know, Normanton, Normaton’s got this really big river. It’s quite a large river, and he went so high that the river was like, you know it was tiny. And he’s swerving and it was the only time in my life that I sat there and went, I actually think I’ve made a really, really bad decision here.

So the producer and I are in the back of the helicopter with no doors. The cameraman is out the front. He’s hanging out the [00:36:00] side of the helicopter. He’s got a GoPro filming things, and it was an amazing experience

Lisa Cox: It sounds terrifying.

Andrew Hagar: It was absolutely terrifying.

Whilst that’s not an accessible story, the thing for me and the unexpected thing for me is those things that you don’t plan when you’re traveling, that you can experience, that you just wouldn’t otherwise have been able to even think about it. And that’s what, for me, travel is all about.

Lisa Cox: Yeah. And chopper rides would highly recommend. I did a chopper ride a little while ago, and the guy there who was built like a tank just picked me up and hoisted me in. So it doesn’t have to be off limits. It’s a great way to just see everything because I couldn’t physically get around it all, but I just got to see it all in 20 minutes instead.

Alright. I’ll quickly ask, people generally get uncomfortable when you talk about disability and finance in the same sentence, but I think it’s really important to put those sorts of figures out there because the travel industry is so influential in changing things for us. So what do they need to know about the worth of the disability dollar [00:37:00] in the tourist industry?

Andrew Hagar: Yeah, AusTrade did some research into this just recently. I think they released a report earlier this year.

They looked at domestic tourism. So they looked at the spend of domestic tourism and found that, I think it was around 21% of all spend in domestic tourism in the first quarter of 2023. So 21% of that was for people with accessible needs and the people traveling with them.

And that equated to one quarter of about $6.8 billion. The spend is significant. We often hear from people say, oh, you’re operating in a niche market. And we really challenge that conversation to say it’s not a niche market. One in six people globally identify as having a disability, and the spend people are having is significant. It’s a mainstream market that everyone should be aware of and support.

Lisa Cox: Definitely, and like Julie said before, it’s not just that one person with disabilities, it’s the four other family members.

It’s definitely not niche.

Julie Jones: I also think we need to identify the fact that a lot of, you know, what Andrew said was the number of people that identify as having a disability. So a lot of people age into having the same needs as somebody with a disability. So I often [00:38:00] use my family, which I don’t think we are that unusual, but my dad has dementia, so that’s a hidden disability and he needs quite a lot of care around that when he’s out in the community.

My mom started off using a walking frame when she sort of started needing greater mobility aids and then a wheelchair, but she would not identify as disabled. My brother-in-law has a prosthetic leg through diabetes. My mother-in-law aged into needing a walking frame and a wheelchair. But again, I don’t think everyone is captured in those figures simply because there are so many people that actually don’t necessarily tick that box of I have a disability. I’ve just aged, I have a bad hip, I have a bad knee, but I can’t step into a bath, or I can’t step over a hob. So it’s actually a really lucrative market and I speak to a lot of destinations. My elevator pitch is, one in five Australians identify as having a disability.

We travel in larger groups because we [00:39:00] often are traveling with people to assist. In our case, we travel as a family of four, even though my son’s older. We stay longer because it takes us longer to do a lot of things. And once we go to that effort to get somewhere, we wanna make sure we can do everything that we’ve spent our airfare to do.

Word of mouth in the disability community is incredibly strong. So it’s really worth catering to this market and it’s the right thing to do anyway. If I say to somebody, would you feel sad if you couldn’t travel with your loved one if something happened to them tomorrow? Most people say yes.

So if you think of it, if you give people the why as well, you definitely need that economic basis ’cause businesses are really struggling as well as everyone else is struggling these days. But you just want that sort of why, that empathy, that desire to do it. I have to say, when people see Braeden experiencing something and they see his euphoria and our absolute joy, I find that it touches [00:40:00] them.

Like they’re really thrilled to see it, that it’s sort of sharing, you know, in his joy. And I think it does make people wanna do better, but it’s just getting to that point.

Lisa Cox: It’s really, really great to have spoken with you both and you are doing incredible work, both within your own communities, disability communities, and also challenging higher up the food chain, so to speak with policy which, which do need to change as well.

But where can people find you and find out about all the incredible things you’re doing?

Julie Jones: You can find me at havewheelchairwilltravel.net or on Facebook “Have Wheelchair Will Travel”. I also have a Facebook group where people love asking questions and having a community to answer them. So that’s wheelchair Accessible Australia on Facebook and also have travelwithoutlimits.com.au where we cover a range of needs when you travel.

So there’s plenty of free information out there to help people get traveling.

Lisa Cox: Awesome. And what about you, Andrew?

Andrew Hagar: Yeah, so we’re [00:41:00] Supported Travel Experiences. You can find us online. It’s www. supportedtravelx.com.au. We’re on the various social media channels.

Lisa Cox: We’ll put those details in the show notes so that people can find them. I’m so glad there are people who have experience in travel, but also get this whole disability thing. Thank you both for being on the podcast.

Julie Jones: Thank you so much, Lisa. It’s been a pleasure.

Andrew Hagar: Yeah, really enjoyed it.

Lisa Cox: Thanks for listening to that was unexpected. If you liked what you heard and you wanna hit more, then hit subscribe Wherever you get your fix. Have any questions or topics that you’d love for us to tackle? Great. Email podcast@youngcare.com au. We can’t wait to hear from you. Check out our show notes for transcripts, video recordings, and to find out more about our guests plus the useful resources they share.

You can reach us on Facebook, Instagram, x and LinkedIn at youngcare oz. Let’s not forget, an inclusive community is everyone’s [00:42:00] business, so let’s keep working together to break down barriers and smash some stereotypes.

https://www.supportedtravelx.com.au  @havewheelchairwilltravel
https://travelwithoutlimits.com.au
https://havewheelchairwilltravel.net

Ben: Hey listeners, it’s Ben from Youngcare. Today we’re gonna talk about improving employment for Australians with disability. According to recent stats from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the 4.4 million Australians with a disability are much less likely to be employed then Australians without disability.

Ben: While 80% of working age Australians without disability are employed, only half of working aged Australians with disabilities are in jobs.

Ben: But what does this mean when we’re looking at the big picture? It means people with disability are more likely to be unemployed, underemployed, and working in poorer quality jobs than people without disability.

Ben: Today we’re joined by Dr. Marissa Shields and Dr. Zoe Atkin from the Center of Research Excellence in Disability and Health to talk about these disparities and a recent study they released that examines the mental health impact of employment among people with disability. Welcome to the show.[00:01:00]

Lisa Cox: Are you sick of the same old disability stereotypes? We were too, so we did something about it. Welcome to That Was Unexpected. The Disability Lifestyle podcast for everyone. Brought to you by Youngcare and hosted by me, Lisa Cox.

Lisa Cox: Join our amazing guests as we delve into topics that don’t often hit the headlines. So let’s do this. Prepare for the unexpected.

Lisa Cox: If you’re low vision like me, or have other accessibility requirements check out our show notes.

Lisa Cox: Before we get started, we’d like to acknowledge the traditional owners of land on which we record. We pay respect to the elders past presence and emerging.

Lisa Cox: Zoe and Marissa, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for coming on. Now, this is part of our mini series about disability employment, and you heard from some wonderful people recently with lived experience and today we’re taking a different tact, talking to [00:02:00] some people who are researching in that area.

Lisa Cox: And research is so important in this space because it informs public policy, government policy, all those, all those sorts of things. But Zoe and Marissa, can you tell us before we get into the research that you’ve done, which is awesome, I’ve read the articles, read the papers, love it. Can you tell us a little bit about yourselves, your backgrounds, and those sorts of things?

Dr Marissa Shields: Yeah, sure. Well, for starters, I just wanna say thanks for having us on. I know Zoe and I have done a lot of research on employment and mental health over the past few years, and it’s really great to get an opportunity to actually talk about it. So I got into research while I was finishing my Master of Public Health.

Dr Marissa Shields: I decided I wanted to have a bit of a career change, so went to do a Master’s. I really enjoyed some of my courses that I was taking and found myself interested in how these sort of environments that we work and live in, how they can shape our health outcomes. And so I was really lucky and [00:03:00] able to get a small research assistant job, actually working with Zoe and people who are still in our research group and ended up finding a bit of a passion with employment.

Dr Marissa Shields: And so, you know, that was such a great experience that I’ve just kind of stayed on at the uni since then.

Lisa Cox: That’s really cool. And what about you, Zoe?

Dr Zoe Atkin: I fell into this area a bit by accident- a very fortuitous accident. I’ve always been interested in issues about social justice, but disability epidemiology or disability research wasn’t really a focus of my public health training.

Dr Zoe Atkin: So I didn’t really have much awareness that there was a whole research area dedicated to this. But I was offered a job at just the right time, working with a team that I really respected. So I, I jumped in and quickly discovered an area I was really passionate about.

Dr Zoe Atkin: I think it was the realization of very stark inequalities in health outcomes and also in employment, but also [00:04:00] a lack of research in this area and a lack of narrative generally about this area. And it made me realize here was an area there was potential to really do the sorts of research that makes a real impact, a real difference to people’s lives, which is the reason we are driven to do the work we do.

Lisa Cox: And I think it’s so great that you both are, because there’s a lot of little rabbit holes to go down in the disability employment space, but having that research is so key to be able to take stakeholders and and things like that.

Lisa Cox: And just to let our listeners know that this incredible research study, which we’ll chat a bit about now. It is co-designed, it has people with disabilities included in the study. So it’s not just we’re the subjects sitting in the corner being asked questions through a glass booth. This is led and driven by people with disabilities as well, which is so, so important and something I love to see.

Lisa Cox: But this research, [00:05:00] please tell us more about it and what you’ve uncovered because it’s all about, just a quick overview, the link between disability, employment, or underemployment, and mental health-which for so many of our listeners will be a no brainer. Like yeah, of course. But now we have some qualitative and quantitative data to put to that.

Lisa Cox: So guys, can you please tell us about the research?

Dr Marissa Shields: Yeah, so like Zoe said, we are really fortunate that we work with a really great team of people and like you mentioned with people with disabilities, so they can help inform what we’re doing, make sure we’re asking the right questions, looking at the right things and actually generating results that are important.

Dr Marissa Shields: So this body of research was really looking across the employment cycle. And sort of what those experiences looked like, and how they impacted people with disabilities, mental health. And then that would help us think through, okay, where are we kind of running into barriers? Where are people experiencing problems? [00:06:00] And what could we actually do to then fix that?

Dr Marissa Shields: So with this sort of employment cycle type approach, we looked at when people were looking for work, what kind of experiences they might encounter. So maybe that’s discrimination, not finding many jobs that are out there or jobs that meet their needs. Then we looked, okay, when people are successfully in a job, what does that look like?

Dr Marissa Shields: And that’s like you said, when we found that experiences of underemployment were really common. The jobs might not be of good quality and unfortunately we found that workplace discrimination was really prevalent. And then that in turn took us to kind of that last stage of employment where maybe you actually leave your job, so maybe your job isn’t a good fit for you and it doesn’t work out. You end up leaving it and either looking for a new job, starting all over again, or potentially going, you know what? This is really not working out for me, and kind of leaving the labor force altogether. , So we looked at those, that sort of [00:07:00] holistic experience and how people’s personal characteristics and the environment around them shape those experiences and how their mental health might be impacted by that.

Dr Zoe Atkin: Perhaps I could just add a little bit of context about this report. So it’s not just one piece of work. What Marissa and I did was summarized lots of different pieces of work done by our team within a big program of research that we were doing as a team across multiple universities.

Dr Zoe Atkin: So we summarized lots of different pieces of research that we’d done and that included studies that use quantitative methods. So using data, whether it was existing data sets or data that was collected by the team to produce statistics. And that’s sort of the work that Marissa and I both tend to focus on.

Dr Zoe Atkin: But we had people within the team who do qualitative research where they do interviews or focus groups asking people about their experiences and really in depth [00:08:00] perspectives. We also did some reviews where we summarized evidence relating to a particular topic to try and understand perhaps how lots of small studies, what we can deduce from small studies and what the best quality evidence might be when we take all of that into account.

Dr Zoe Atkin: And, you know, as we’ve talked about briefly alongside this, in all our work, we engage with people with lived experience of disability and we do that in different ways. We have some lived experience research assistants within the team who are employed, because they are experts by experience. But we also have many academic team members with lived experience of disability.

Dr Zoe Atkin: And then there are some projects where we work with advisory groups or community groups to understand broader perspectives. So these are all different ways that we bring lived experience perspectives into our research.

Lisa Cox: Okay. Now, the quantitative data that you mentioned, have you got any [00:09:00] stats that you could throw at us really, really quickly?

Dr Zoe Atkin: I mean, we’ve got some very simple statistics about employment. Yep. Great. So for example, about 50% of people with disability of working age are employed, and this compares to about 80% of people without disability.

Dr Zoe Atkin: About 10% of people with disability are unemployed, and this compares to about 4% of people without disability. So there are some sort of key statistics demonstrating those stark inequalities in employment.

Dr Marissa Shields: I was just gonna add, with all of what Zoe said, that’s what we’re seeing now, but it’s also what we’ve been seeing for a long time.

Dr Marissa Shields: So those numbers are really quite stagnant. They haven’t changed over the last, say like 20 years.

Lisa Cox: They haven’t.

Dr Marissa Shields: We’ve still seen these really big inequalities in employment.

Lisa Cox: Despite all the money that’s being spent on programs, but we’ll get into that just a little bit later. In reading the article about your research, something I [00:10:00] found really interesting was that your findings showed that people who were employed part-time had better health outcomes than people would who were not employed at all.

Lisa Cox: So could you delve into that a little bit more?

Dr Zoe Atkin: Yeah, I can start perhaps with that. So we looked at part-time work and underemployment in slightly different ways. And Marissa might highlight some of, the work about unemployment afterwards. But when we looked at people who were working part-time we found that people who were working part-time, it actually had positive impacts on mental health, if they were choosing to work part-time and didn’t want to work more hours.

Dr Zoe Atkin: We found this research project combined quantitative data, so looking at statistics, but also qualitative interviews with people with disability, and other stakeholders. We found that part-time work was beneficial for mental health and associated with reduced use of mental health [00:11:00] services.

Dr Zoe Atkin: And when we spoke to people about their experiences, we found that some people saw part-time work as a transition into full-time employment, so a pathway into work. But other people were working part-time because they didn’t have the capacity to work full-time. And I think the findings of that research really highlights the need for flexibility in work so that people with disability can find a job that meets their needs.

Lisa Cox: That’s right. And we all saw a lot of, whether or not you have a disability, there was a lot of flexibility and a lot of changes during COVID. But, what do you think we learned during COVID about the importance of flexibility and disability employment?

Lisa Cox: I know there was a paper that I’ve read only recently about employment rates for people with disabilities going up during COVID because suddenly we could all work from home and there was that flexibility, which would been asking for, for decades, but businesses always said, oh no, we can’t do that. The business can’t afford to, [00:12:00] or whatever their excuse was. And suddenly the pandemic meant we have to, and disability employment rose as terrible as COVID was.

Lisa Cox: So, could either of you speak, was that included in our research at all? Could you speak to that?

Dr Marissa Shields: That wasn’t something that I would say we generally looked at in our research. And part of that I think is because much of this research started before COVID and a lot of it was wrapping up during COVID, so we didn’t necessarily have the data to really delve into that point. And I think we’re still kind of exploring what those effects look like in these years post the really acute part of the pandemic.

Dr Marissa Shields: I think we know anecdotally and from some research that we’ve done, that working from home was a real benefit for people with disabilities. And I would also add that it’s a benefit for lots of different kinds of people, right? So, people who have caring responsibilities, you know, for whatever reason you’re juggling your life [00:13:00] and working from home and having that flexibility is beneficial for a lot of people.

Dr Marissa Shields: So I would say working from home definitely and having those different kinds of technologies that can allow people to participate is really beneficial, but still something that we are learning more about and exploring.

Dr Marissa Shields: We do work with a lot of people with disabilities and we do work with people who are out of state so, having this ability to work from home and work remotely, I think has really made our research better because we can easily work with, and chat with, all different kinds of people who are in all different kinds of places and having lots of different experiences.

Dr Marissa Shields: So I can certainly say for our research, I think it’s enriched it.

Lisa Cox: That’s, that’s such an important point to make for any researchers looking to include people with disabilities having this technology available because you get a certain subset of the disability community who can maybe afford in inner city living or, all of those sorts of things.

Lisa Cox: We don’t have any [00:14:00] sociologists on the show, to chat too in depth about that but yeah really good point. . Now under employment. Unfortunately, it’s something I’ve certainly experienced a lot of and a lot of our listeners may have as well. Could one of you please explain underemployment and also what your research found in that area?

Dr Marissa Shields: You know, we definitely found that underemployment was a common experience and that it can really negatively impact people’s mental health. But just to clarify what we actually mean by underemployment cause I know Zoe talked just before about part-time employment, and I think at a glance it can seem like maybe there’s, they’re the same thing. They can be easy to confuse.

Dr Marissa Shields: But when we’re talking about underemployment, we’re actually talking about a situation where a person is in a job, but they’re not getting the amount of hours that they want. So they might want 20 hours a week, but they’re only getting 15, or they want 40 hours a week, they want to be full-time, but they’re only getting 30.

Dr Marissa Shields: So there’s this mismatch between what people want and what they’re [00:15:00] getting. So what we found in our research is that for both people with and without disability, being underemployed has negative impacts on mental health. So it’s not good for anybody. But the key thing we found was that this impact was much greater for people with disability.

Dr Marissa Shields: So they experienced this kind of larger deterioration in their mental health when they’re underemployed compared to people who don’t have a disability. So it’s really significantly damaging. We found. And would it be correct to say that underemployment is also when you are doing roles which are well below your capability?

Lisa Cox: I know that was my experience. I was brought into an office to answer phones and stuff envelopes. I was so bored I had to leave. And the same thing happened in the next role, and that was my version of underemployment. Would that be correct?

Dr Marissa Shields: That’s definitely another form of underemployment.

Dr Marissa Shields: I think we might use different words to explain that experience ’cause we’re [00:16:00] trying to parse it out and apply it. You know, within data and make statistics work for it. Of course. So I’m just thinking of our listeners. That form of underemployment is certainly something that people experience and I think, we’ve heard about that from people certainly in our qualitative research as well.

Dr Marissa Shields: That’s probably where it’s more come out for us in this body of research and we have some case studies in our reports actually I’m thinking of one in particular of a younger person who was successfully able to get a job and then found that the expectations were so low she actually wasn’t being given any proper work to do.

Dr Marissa Shields: And it was that kind of mismatch of yep, she’s got skills and she wants to work and wants to. Build on her abilities, and she just wasn’t being provided with an opportunity to do that. So that’s unfortunately, I think also a common experience. Okay. Yeah I was thinking of our listeners too. Perhaps they hadn’t heard the term or had experienced it, but not knowing what that was.

Lisa Cox: Now both of you have spoken a lot about [00:17:00] mental health and it’s a big, big area, but specifically what did the studies find in terms of disability employment, and what, areas of mental health did you look at?

Dr Marissa Shields: I guess for me, mental health is absolutely critically important. That was the outcome of most of our studies, what we looked at. I do think it’s important to acknowledge though. What we actually mean by mental health cause I think sometimes in the disability space, especially when people who aren’t really familiar with it, it can get a little bit mixed up.

Dr Marissa Shields: And so when we think about mental health, we think about how every person has the right to the highest possible standard of health, right? So this isn’t just an absence of disease, but this is this total sense of physical, mental, social wellbeing. So mental health isn’t just not having a mental illness or not having poor mental health, but it’s the opposite.

Dr Marissa Shields: It’s this sort of holistic state of [00:18:00] wellbeing where people can cope with their normal life stressors, contribute to their community, and realize their abilities. So that’s, that’s what we’re aiming for when we talk about mental health in this context. Okay. And so we know that. Mental health is impacted by people’s environments, and that includes their job and what their working environment looks like.

Dr Marissa Shields: So we overwhelmingly found that when people with disabilities had a job, it actually had positive effects on a sort of holistic measure of their mental health. So it wasn’t just that not having a job was bad, it was actually having a job is good and it’s even better if that job is of good quality and you know, meets your needs for your working hours.

Dr Marissa Shields: So I think that’s the real through line of our work that employment was this key to actually having positive mental health outcomes.

Dr Zoe Atkin: I was just gonna add a little bit to what Marissa said on why we think we’re seeing those positive impacts of employment for mental health.

Dr Zoe Atkin: And while our research [00:19:00] didn’t specifically look at how or why employment benefits, mental health, we can use existing research to speculate about those reasons why we’re seeing those associations. You know, an obvious one that we might jump to straight away is financial security and that crucial role of employment in ensuring people do have financial security and income. One of our projects did look at the role of income and found that it only accounted for a small account, a proportion of the beneficial effect on mental health. So there’s a lot more going on than just the financial role of employment and income.

Dr Zoe Atkin: I think from other studies we could hypothesize that it’s likely to bring social connectedness which we know is really important for people with disability and their mental health. It’s also likely to bring a sense of social identity, work identity, or a sense of collective purpose and [00:20:00] self-esteem, which is really important for mental health.

Dr Zoe Atkin: And it’s also likely to bring time, structure, and stability to people’s lives. So it’s likely to be a combination of all of these factors which lead to those positive mental health impacts.

Lisa Cox: Oh, definitely. There was a Harvard study done years and years ago, over decades, and this is about people without disabilities, that the key indicator of happiness and health and all those sorts of things wasn’t financial.

Lisa Cox: It wasn’t having a big bank account and all of those sorts of things that we’d normally associate with being or assume create happiness. It was actually about purpose and having a job you love and, excuse me, if I’m misquoting the research or the article, but do you know, do you know the one I’m talking about? Am I making any sense to anybody?

Dr Marissa Shields: Yes. Absolutely. You’re making sense.

Dr Zoe Atkin: I can’t reference the exact paper.

Lisa Cox: No, I can’t cite it.

Dr Zoe Atkin: Absolutely. You know, we talk about all the socioeconomic determinants, including some social benefits, all these complex [00:21:00] factors that interact together to lead to better mental health. And there are some models of the determinants of mental health. And when you start reading into it more, you realize how complicated it is.

Dr Zoe Atkin: There are so many interrelated factors that lead to, positive mental health and sense of purpose is definitely important in those models. It’s really hard to tease out one thing versus another, because there’s just so much complexity there.

Lisa Cox: And I love that you recognized that it is complex and a holistic, it’s not just a tick box, one size fits all thing. One of you mentioned, taking a holistic approach much earlier in the podcast, and I think that’s really important to recognize because it almost feels like some of the initiatives that are currently being brought out or a bit of a well tick box.

Lisa Cox: We can find a solution for the short election term that’s there, but longer term, we need to look at the broader social issues and much, much more that are affecting disability [00:22:00] employment outcomes. And it’s not just a case of an incentive or a plan or a scheme to maybe fix some things, but not looking at the bigger picture. So when it comes to employers and recruiters, are there any that you can think of or are really the gold standard in terms of, this is what good employment looks like?

Dr Marissa Shields: I can’t think of a particular organization off the top of my head where I can go, that’s absolutely the way to do it. And that may in part be a reflection on disability is very diverse and people have very different needs, so what may look like ideal sort of supports for one person might not be what another person needs.

Dr Marissa Shields: But I would say really broadly, employers, recruiters, they do have a good role to play in building inclusive workplaces. So they’re in a position where they can make a difference. I would say we know that discrimination is a really big barrier, and we also [00:23:00] know that employers can start taking some steps to address that.

Lisa Cox: Okay. And what would some of those steps be?

Dr Marissa Shields: So I think the first thing is thinking about creating inclusive environments broadly, and this kind of starts getting into a little bit around reasonable accommodations that you can offer to all your employees, not just people who say they have a disability , but also promoting this kind of visibly inclusive environment.

Dr Marissa Shields: And I realize that culture change doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s something for employers to start thinking about how they can signal that they actually not just tolerate diversity, but they actually value inclusivity. Yeah. So I think, you know, they can actually encourage diverse groups of people to apply for jobs.

Dr Marissa Shields: You can have employee organizations in the workplace. You know, thinking through your actual recruitment process, are you maybe accidentally using some ableist language in your job ads? What have you thought about in terms of accessibility for interviews and just sort of thinking through those different steps of the process and employers need support to do [00:24:00] that.

Dr Marissa Shields: It’s not necessarily a one and done situation, but I think by sort of carefully thinking through those steps, you can end up having more inclusive employment. I was just gonna add a nice place to start when you think about that is to look internally and reflect on how we do things within our own organizations.

Dr Marissa Shields: And we’ve worked very hard over the last few years to make our unit, our workplace in which we work, making it as flexible and accessible as possible. We always, when we have jobs coming up, we always encourage people with disabilities to apply and try to promote those employment opportunities within the disability community.

Dr Zoe Atkin: So I think it’s really, really important to lead the way you want to see other organizations do it and to promote those opportunities. I think alongside having those workplace inclusiveness, we need to think more broadly at a societal [00:25:00] level. There are changes that have to happen in the workplace, but broader changes have to happen to promote a more inclusive society, need to address community attitudes and try to understand how we can change community attitudes as well as incorrect assumptions about people with disability.

Dr Zoe Atkin: I think there’s a lot of lack of awareness about the experience of disability and this needs to shift, and one way this could be done is through better representation of people with disability. Hooray. For example, people with disability we know are rarely covered in the media, and when they are, it’s often through negative stereotypes , and not accurately represented.

Dr Zoe Atkin: So I think better representation could challenge people’s assumptions, and start to understand broader, more diverse perspectives. And we need to make sure we champion the voices of people with disability in everyday life. And we try to do as much as possible, of that in our research and we know that [00:26:00] leads to better quality and more relevant research.

Lisa Cox: Incredibly well said. Representation, definitely important. And a lot of the representation I see when it comes to disability employment is only those entry level jobs, which are fine for some people. Absolutely fantastic. And I certainly don’t wanna criticize that, but we need to see representation right across the board.

Lisa Cox: There are CEOs, people on the C-suite, executives who also happen to have a disability, neurodivergence or chronic illness. We need to see that representation as well.

Lisa Cox: So you did speak about all sorts of inclusive employment, and we know that’s not just as simple as sticking a real wheelchair ramp at the door and job done, but going right back to the start the job ad and the employment process, how can we make that more inclusive. If there is perhaps a recruiter out there going, I wanna hire people with disabilities, but how do I start that conversation apart from writing [00:27:00] “people with disabilities please apply” at the top of my ad or something.

Dr Marissa Shields: So I can’t necessarily speak to this from, you know, specific research we did on how to actually change or modify the process. But I think based on what we’ve learned from doing research and employment among people with disability broadly, is that I would say as a first step, you need to start looking out for information from people with disabilities, making connections with maybe disabled people’s organizations, taking a look at government websites, seeing what kind of services you could access to be able to hire and support people with disability, and just really sort of doing a bit of an information search so that you get some tools to help you feel disability confident so that you’re not just going into an employment process going, oh, I should hire someone with disabilities. But you actually go, okay, I feel like I have the tools and knowledge to actually, support this person in the workplace.

Dr Marissa Shields: But I think in order to make sure you’re doing [00:28:00] that right, maybe as someone who doesn’t have a great awareness of disability, it’s just not something you experienced in your life. Actually speaking with people who do have that experience can be really illuminating and can help you understand maybe the kinds of choices you need to make or the kinds of things you need to think about.

Dr Marissa Shields: So I think that would be my first step in terms of going, oh, what do I do to make this better? There’s people out there who can provide you with information to help you.

Dr Zoe Atkin: And, and I think alongside that, looking within the organization and seeing if disabled voices can be championed within the organization and diverse perspectives more generally.

Dr Zoe Atkin: That might be more challenging in small businesses, but in large organizations, you know, valuing that diversity explicitly and championing those voices could really help understand what some of those barriers are and how they could be addressed.

Lisa Cox: Yeah, definitely. And intersectionality as well. Not just a bunch of white guys in wheelchairs, but the full gamut.

Lisa Cox: Now, if we [00:29:00] could sit you both down with key policy makers, decision makers, all the people who do all things, for those of us with disability, what are some key messages, key findings from your research that you’d like to let them know about?

Dr Marissa Shields: Well, what an opportunity that would be if we got it.

Lisa Cox: Please invite me.

Dr Marissa Shields: We would love to have you along. I think overwhelmingly I would say that people with disability want to work, people with disability have a right to work, and that employment is a really key way to protect and promote the mental health of people with disability. I think those would really be my key messages in terms of this is something that’s really important.

Dr Marissa Shields: It’s not only what people want and have a right to do, but it’s a way to improve their participation, make sure that they have better health outcomes and, generally productive, flourishing lives. And we know that people wanna work. We’ve heard that from our research from the disability [00:30:00] community, but we also know that there are these real barriers to actually making that happen for people to gain and maintain employment.

Dr Marissa Shields: And so we really need policy makers to take a serious look at this. We need to actually live up to our responsibilities, as part of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability, and actually think about, okay, what we’ve been doing hasn’t quite been working. What are some changes that we could make that would help people not just get a job, but actually keep it and flourish in it.

Lisa Cox: That’s right . Look at the history. Historically, what we’re doing is not working, so we need to start exploring different angles.

Dr Zoe Atkin: Some of the key messages that we’d really like to promote for from our research is really a call to action, a set of recommendations for policy makers.

Dr Zoe Atkin: There were four of them I’d like to highlight now the first one we’ve already talked about and it’s the need to create inclusive workplaces. So I won’t talk more about that. The [00:31:00] second one is the need to build effective employment services to support people with disability, and particularly the need for individualized models of employment support. And I think this is really important to incorporate in the Disability Employment Services program, with a focus of placing people into jobs that meet their needs, their skills, their aspirations, not just getting people into any job.

Dr Zoe Atkin: We know that there have been problems with the disability employment services programs . But there are some major reforms going on. The new Inclusive Employment Australia program will be implemented later this year. And so we are hopeful that some of those barriers will be addressed and we’ll have a system, a program that does support those individualized job placements.

Dr Zoe Atkin: I think we also need to create more opportunities for people, more employment opportunities for people with disability, and that’s not an easy problem to solve. I think it [00:32:00] needs to be a multi-pronged approach. To do that, we need lots of strategies, but some examples could be setting disability employment targets within workplaces, or having hiring schemes specifically for people with disability, as well as financial incentives for employers to hire people with disability.

Lisa Cox: Okay. They’re all great.

Dr Zoe Atkin: And then finally my last one, is we need to improve job preparedness for young people with disability. That’s both within formal educational settings, but also outside formal educational settings for them to receive training and help them have the skills and experience to be ready to work.

Dr Zoe Atkin: And we need to support positive expectations of employment from families and the community more broadly.

Lisa Cox: Getting back to, that attitudinal thing that needs to shift and change, but it’s again, really great you take that holistic approach. It’s not just about the workplace, but it’s also [00:33:00] systemic. What happens in education before the workplace and all of those sorts of things.

Lisa Cox: The disability employment program that you mentioned, July this year it’s coming out. Could you tell me a little bit more about that, how it’s supposed to combine NDIS and DES?

Dr Zoe Atkin: Look, there’s a lot of uncertainty I think about what it will look like. One of the barriers that has been talked about is the lack of interface between different service systems, between the DES services NDIS and health. So I’m hoping that will be addressed in the new program, but I don’t have much clarity at the moment on what that will look like, but we are hopeful that we’ll see improvements coming up in the next few months.

Lisa Cox: Certainly hope so too. And what would you say to the argument that all of these programs, incentives, all of those things, they’re great for a short time for some people, but they’re [00:34:00] really just not addressing the root cause of disability unemployment, which is, horrible social attitudes. Would either of you like to add to that? You touched on it a little bit before Zoe, about it being much bigger than just disability employment, but even things like representation, playing a part.

Dr Zoe Atkin: Absolutely. I mean, all I can say is that these are really complex issues and they need to be addressed at multiple levels.

Dr Zoe Atkin: Yes, there is broader reform that’s needed, broader changes to attitudes more generally. But that does mean that there also needs to be strong reforms within disability employment programs. So I think multiple strategies are needed and one change that I know that is happening within the disability employment system is part-time work is one outcome that has changed. People don’t necessarily need to be placed in full-time work. They can be placed in part-time work. That’s showing us that the need for flexibility is [00:35:00] being acknowledged.

Dr Zoe Atkin: So, these might seem like small changes and I’m not aware of the rest of the changes that go along going alongside but, that was a finding of our research and it’s really great to see some of those findings being reflected in these new policies.

Lisa Cox: Zoe, you mentioned, I forget the exact words you used, but almost like quotas, that wasn’t the word, but do you have any thoughts around disability quotas in employment?

Dr Zoe Atkin: Look, it’s a tricky one. I think it could work well within some organizations to demonstrate what inclusive workplaces look like.

Dr Zoe Atkin: Ideally, we’d be in a situation where we don’t need quotas.

Lisa Cox: Yeah, of course.

Dr Zoe Atkin: But I think quotas can be a way to get there. So I think there are targets within government organizations. I’m not too familiar with exactly what they are, and I don’t think they’re being met currently.

Dr Zoe Atkin: So I need to look [00:36:00] into that in a bit. But it’d be lovely to see some organizations that are doing it well and to really showcase how they’re doing it and provide examples for other organizations to do the same.

Lisa Cox: Yeah, definitely. What are the barriers and challenges that you found when it comes to disability employment?

Dr Zoe Atkin: The key barrier that we heard from in our research was discrimination. It was such an important theme that came up at every stage of the employment cycle. So I think it’s really the key barrier that needs to be mentioned. But we did also find lots of other barriers. We found people experience challenges with employment services, a lack of focus on individualized employment models and challenges getting a good job match through those employment services.

Dr Zoe Atkin: We also found that people were telling us about a lack of jobs. So that really highlights the need to create employment opportunities. And people were also telling us about a lack of flexibility in the workplace, [00:37:00] making it hard for people with disability to meet their needs. That may make jobs unsustainable in the long term for some people with disability. Then there were also much broader barriers to employment that I’ll highlights and I might pass on to Marissa to talk more about that, but, lots of broad social determinants that are relevant.

Lisa Cox: Sure.

Dr Zoe Atkin: Things like inadequate educational training or insecure housing.

Dr Marissa Shields: That’s exactly what I was going to say. We’ve got these barriers that are. Really distinct to employment, but then also there’s so much more going on. People have complex lives.

Dr Marissa Shields: They bring their life experience with them when they’re looking for work, when they’re working in a job. And it’s important to think through all these other determinants, the determinants of health, but they also impact your ability to work. So, like Zoe mentioned, housing. I know that’s something you’ve discussed on the podcast before and we know that that’s really important, right?

Dr Marissa Shields: People need to have stable and secure housing, and if you don’t have that, then gaining a job and maintaining that job is [00:38:00] really, really difficult.

Dr Marissa Shields: Same thing. If you don’t have maybe the health services that you need to help you stay healthy and well, and in a place where you’re able to work, then maybe getting a job, you know, that’s gonna be challenging, but potentially also not your biggest priority if you can’t stay well yourself.

Dr Marissa Shields: So there’s a lot of complex things going on that also feed into. Employment and like Zoe said, this discrimination that does feed in at all these different levels.

Lisa Cox: Absolutely. I think that’s why we talk about the employment rate and why increasing that is so important, but it only tells a fraction of the story because the disability employment rate, yeah, sure we can get people in jobs, but that doesn’t mean they’re not going to be bullied or unable to access the office, get a cab, get public transport. And like you said, there are so many things that feed into disability unemployment.

Lisa Cox: Now we ask all of our guests this [00:39:00] final question, what about your life or your research or anything you like is unexpected? Marissa, we’ll start with you.

Dr Marissa Shields: So I guess I would say you never quite know what opportunities might come your way. And actually ending up here, having this lovely conversation with you and Zoe, is definitely not what I expected in my life. I hadn’t planned on this career path, or even being in Australia.

Dr Marissa Shields: So I met my Australian partner when I lived in Taiwan and then moved here. Made a career change ’cause public health seemed like a rewarding space to be. And then, you know, just never quite left the university and I’m now here today. So I think it’s all been a bit of an unexpected, but I would say very, very fun and very, very rewarding journey.

Lisa Cox: Oh, glad you’re here. Awesome. And what about you, Zoe?

Dr Zoe Atkin: Oh, it’s funny. I have a very similar experience where I moved over to Australia from the UK for a [00:40:00] one year contract and was determined to go back and 14 years later, I’m very much established in Australia.

Lisa Cox: You’re both stuck!

Dr Zoe Atkin: But my career journey has been unexpected and I think research and academic careers tend to be, there’s a lot of insecurity in terms of funding, so you never quite know where it’s going to go, which is terrifying and exciting. But as a result, I have a clear career plan B ’cause you never know what’s going to happen. And my career plan B is to open a sourdough bakery.

Lisa Cox: Oh God. And you’re both in Melbourne, unfortunately. So unless you franchise and come up to Brisbane.

Lisa Cox: But thank you both so much for being on the pod. What you’re doing, research around disability employment, is absolutely fantastic. And the fact that you’re including people with lived experience, disabled voices in that research, leading the research, all the things, is brilliant because we didn’t [00:41:00] see that decades ago.

Lisa Cox: So really, really excited that you’re doing this and hopefully it can inform some groundbreaking policy that changes things and finally starts moving the situation from where it is. Because, like you’ve both alluded to, the stats around disability employment, despite all the government interventions and money that we’ve thrown at, it hasn’t changed.

Lisa Cox: So we need to look at something different and this sort of research can really help decision makers to adjust what they’re doing. So thank you again, both of you, for coming on the podcast.

Dr Zoe Atkin: Thanks so much for having us.

Lisa Cox: Thanks for listening to that was unexpected. If you liked what you heard and you wanna hear more, then hit subscribe wherever you get your fix. Have any questions or topics that you’d love for us to tackle great email podcast@youngcare.com au. We can’t wait to hear from you.

Lisa Cox: Check out our show notes for transcripts, video [00:42:00] recordings, and to find out more about our guests plus the useful resources they share.

Lisa Cox: You can reach us on Facebook, Instagram, X and LinkedIn at youngcare oz. Let’s not forget, an inclusive community is everyone’s business, so let’s keep working together to break down barriers and smash some stereotypes.