A joint initiative will focus on better including people with disabilities in vocational education and training (VET) and employment. It also aims to make employers more aware of the available labour force and disabled people’s potential

The joint initiative is part of the German federal government's National Action Plan for implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The three-year programme intends to promote occupational orientation of young people with handicaps, VET for youth and employment for older people with severe disabilities. It also aims to foster inclusion competence of chambers of industry and commerce. A further aim is to recruit additional skilled labour for trade businesses and enterprises. Therefore, this initiative is also an important contribution to the German federal government's skilled labour strategy (Konzept Fachkräftesicherung).

In this initiative umbrella organisations of industry will encourage companies and firms to offer more training and employment for people with disabilities with their own joint nationwide campaign Inklusion gelingt! (inclusion is successful). Its messages will be disseminated by federations of employers, their training institutes and chambers in cooperation with many other stakeholders such as employment agencies, joint institutions, communal job centres, integration agencies, representatives of severely disabled people and associations of people with disabilities.

Integration agencies of the federal states will improve their advisory and information services for severely disabled people and employers as well as their cooperation with in-company stakeholders. They will expand existing networks and align these even more towards cooperation.

The German Trade Union Confederation (DGB), associations of people with disabilities, the German Rural District Association and the federal government’s representative for the interests of the disabled will support this inclusion initiative and help ensure that it becomes effective in all regions of Germany.

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ReferNet Germany