Abstract
Partnering with community connected employment opportunities to generate inclusion of young people with disabilities for enhanced future work integration.Through team collaboration and evaluation we noticed an aligning/ dovetailing goals related to integration of lived experience into the care we provide and the need to create employment and community integration opportunities for youth with disabilities and alignment with provision of social determinants of health. The opportunity that presented itself was the creation of a summer employment pipeline for young clients with disabilities.From an individual client perspective, participation in employment as early as high school correlates to greater lifetime workforce attachment, which is tied to better lifelong mental and physical health, greater social integration, and increased financial security. From a client representation and people-centred care perspective, having youth with disabilities as employees in our teams - even if just for the summer - allows for their input into the types of care and services that they receive. From a social and equity perspective, having individuals with disabilities on our staff allows our clients with disabilities looking towards their futures to see themselves represented in the workforce, with an eye on the future and understandings of how they can be a part of their community and broader society, if they so choose. From a team and financial perspective, hiring summer students and leveraging their skills as well as financial incentives (e.g. Canada summer jobs program) allows for the undertaking of special projects that would not otherwise get the attention they need. From a team-learning perspective, we are developing practices related to integration of a diverse workforce, and building the practices, understandings, and culture of inclusion in our workforce beyond summer student hiring, all while supported by out job coaching experts.This initiative is so exciting because it allows our teams to leverage the strengths of our discrete, established, outcomes-driven programs that are already working and collaborate to innovate and better serve our clients in multiples ways with shared effort.