Welcome (: Welcome :) We are a group of students doing a service learning collaboration with APSN tanglin school.
Our team seeks to enrich the students by improving their literacy skills through weekly tutoring sessions
This small lil website serves as the blog of our group, providing us with a platform to express our feelings in the form of a reflection.
Clarence, Daniel, Hong Jhun, Ranald, Vignes


rewind March 2011 April 2011 May 2011 July 2011

Research Material by viggy Sunday, April 3, 2011 @ 12:42 PM Today, as I was researching on the job field and the oppurtunities made available to people affected by disabilities, I came across an article written in 2004 by Dr. S. Vasoo who at that time, was the head of the department of Social Work and Psychology in NUS. I was intrigued by this article particularly because it tackles the issue of why the employment rate among the disabled is still low, despite the good employment prospects made available by the government. The article mentions Bizlink centre which is defined by the article as a "more concerted effort (which) has emerged to assess and place disabled for employment." Despite the creation of Bizlink centre, on average only 225 disable people are hired through Bizlink Centre annually. I was shocked to have read this, primarily because of the hard truth that Singaporeans are still discriminatory and prejudiced against the disabled. It is also to be noted that the article mentions that unemployment is high among the visually, intellectually and neuro-muscular disabled. This is highly relevant to APSN where the students are affected by mild intelligence defficiency, as this would mean when it is their turn to enter the working world, their disability will affect their job prospects. The reasons given in the article are straightforward yet revealing of the fact that Singapore simply isn't "disability-friendly". No matter how many busses  are made "disability-friendly" , the fact remains we are still unable to create an environment ideal for the disabled to flourish and grow. In fact, our society has made an environment hostile for the development of the disabled. The article mentions that the reasons behind the high rates of unemployment among  the visually, intellectually and neuro-muscular disabled are : Social Stigma against those who are disabled Minority status of the disabled Transportation problems Physical barriers ( this is more applicable to the phsyically disabled and the neuro-muscular disabled) Inadequate Vocational skills and educational level.  Social stigma is a rising problem as many are prejudiced against the disabled believing they are lacking of skills that are necessary for the job. This affects the mindset of potential employers when they are confronted by the thought that the disabled person applying for the job may in fact fail to live up to expectations, resulting in losses. I believe that this discriminatory thoughts are due to a lack of awareness and can only be tackled by raising public awareness and corporation awareness on the capabilities of the disabled. Ultimately, social stigma can only be combatted by education of the masses. The disabled are a minority in Singapore, and thus are inadvertently marginalised into helpless roles by the non-disabled. This causes many problems as when they are marginalised, their chances of getting a job becomes much lower than that of the non-disabled. This is something that really needs to be improved upon. I remember that Ms Jey informed us that APSN has great need for a class on transportation and now I fully realise why this is so important. Unlike the non-disabled, disabled people may not be able to take public transportation without being taught by the appropriate authorities (school). If they are not taught this, they are unable to go to work in the very first place, limiting their employability greatly. However, taking into consideration the transportation classes provided in APSN I think this is slowly being improved upon. Inadequate Vocational skills and educational levels are no longer relevant in the matter of employability of the disabled. This is because, schools for the disabled are making Vocational skills classes compulsory, thus aiding in teaching the disabled skills that they require. Also, considering that our group project will be on this, I think it would be really good to approach Ms Jey to find out if the Vocational skills classes are sufficient to get students employed in the future, or if there is still room for improvement in the current circumstances. Website: http://www.disabilityworld.org/01-03_04/employment/singapore.shtml BACK TO TOP ▲ 0 hugs