2025 DAWA Summit 31 March
‘Employment for People with Disabilities – Creating more certain Bridges and Pathway’
Our March 31st Employment Summit was a successful one-day event attended by 96 invited guests in Perth and 16 online in the Kimberley at Broome and Kununurra.
Attendees included people with disabilities,family members, support providers,employment organisations,advocates and peer support groups and government representatives.
This was the first of three events in the sequence for this year and the start of our collaboration with Inclusion Solutions WA and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry WA.
Sincere thanks to the teams at Inclusion Solutions and CCIWA and we look forward to our work together across 2025.
The issue is that employment levels for people living with disability in WA are well under acceptable numbers within both government and the private sector. The available statistics continue to show that the unemployment rate for people with disability is double the rate of working age people without disability. DAWA elected to revisit Employment again for this reason following our 2022 Summit on the same topic.
Collaborating with Inclusion Solutions and CCIWA is driven by the desire to create a united front here. To focus on understanding the essential elements for improvement and collectively advocating with others in our sector for employers and their advisers across the state to raise their levels of awareness and remove the roadblocks. Also to join us with raising the number of opportunities and jointly identifying the practices and pathways to achieving person centred and sustainable placements.
Providing some context to open the day we heard from three spotlight speakers:
Lena Constantine – Executive Director CCIWA
Mike Rowe – Director General Department of Communities WA
Alex Buckley – Manager Disability Employment Policy Branch Commonwealth Dept of Social Services
Each provided their different perspectives and insights – from Industry and State and Commonwealth governments – on our Summit theme.
Then we got to work!
Our nine ecosystem-like discussion PODs with facilitators and scribes discussed a range of predetermined questions to explore the topic and look at the reasons why progress has not been made but also to add new ways of thinking and measuring and reporting future progress to ignite others. See the program link for full details.
The work done and the spirit shared was tremendous!
Our PODs continue to be popular! Feedback after all 3 POD sessions was that the discussions along with meeting new people and hearing the differing views in the POD format was clearly the most popular element of the day!
This was great to hear for us at DAWA as it underscores the essence of DAWA’s Spirit – providing a Place for the collective voices of disability across WA to share and be brave and creative and get things done!
We provided our guests with barista made coffee and morning tea and a yummy lunch. It worked! The food was the second most popular item from our feedback forms!
In summary it was a very successful day!
We are now preparing the feedback to share with all attendees in plain English and Easy Read versions and on our website very soon.
Photos from our day are here too and we welcome feedback to hello@disabilityassemblywa.org
Finally on behalf of the DAWA Board and Council members and our summit Team – thank you to all who attended as guests and presenters and for our facilitators and scribes. The energy and buzz across the TSH venue was epic and you helped make it.
Many thanks as well to Tom Tolchard for his pro bono contribution with the important POD oversight role.
DAWA is a volunteer run organisation, and we really appreciate our Sponsors support. Not only with this Summit but also our follow up Summit which will be held in early August 2025.
Updates will be provided including our work with Inclusion Solutions and CCIWA which is underway.
Bruce Langoulant AM
Summit Committee Lead
DAWA Director