Here’s How We Can All Make a Difference for Youth Who Have a Disability and Want to Work
Filed under: Inclusive Hiring, Youth Success, Youth Success Strategy
Reading time: 6:30 | Posted by Dr. Jennifer Crowson, PhD
Photography courtesy Hilary Gauld | One for the Wall Photography and Canadian Down Syndrome Society

Did you know that in 2022, 27% of Canadians aged 15 and older had at least one disability? That amounts to eight million Canadians.
And it represents an increase of 4.7%, or 1.8 million more people, since 2017.
These were the findings of the Statistics Canada 2022 Canadian Survey on Disability (CSD).
Another thing the 2022 CSD showed, that you may not know about: 20% of Canadian youth age 15–24 have a disability. The increase of disability among youth was higher (7%) compared to the general population (4.7%) since the 2017 CSD.
Here’s something else to think about: youth who have a disability, have significantly lower rates of employment than those without disabilities.
A 2022 national research report by the Vancouver-based Disability Foundation’s Youth Leadership Initiative, found thata 51% of Canadian youth (17–29) who have a disability are unemployed. That’s compared to 10.1% of young people (15–24 without disabilities. The research report was done “by and for young Canadians with disabilities.”
For young people who have autism and or developmental disabilities the barriers are greater. They have even lower rates of both educational attainment and employment.
There’s a lot of young, fresh talent being overlooked for building a pipeline that can help businesses ensure they remain successful in the future.
Another factor: Federal statistics show there are 83,440 youth in Canada who have a disability, who could be potential workers. These are young people who who have a disability, who are neither in school nor employed.
Any way you look at this, there’s a lot of young, fresh talent being overlooked for building a pipeline that can help businesses ensure they remain successful in the future. To borrow a famous advertising tag line, the strength of every business is its people, regardless of its product or service.
Barriers to employment for youth
Youth who have a disability face significant barriers and discrimination in seeking both the experiences needed to develop important skills and in obtaining paid employment. Common myths can make it difficult for these youth to achieve their goals and reach their full potential.

7 Common Myths About Youth Who Have a Disability
Myth #1:
They do better by not participating in risky activities such as sports
Reality:
Participation is an opportunity to grow and learn
Myth #2:
They succeed more in “special classrooms” in school
Reality:
Inclusion in mainstream classrooms is good for everyone
Myth #3:
They don’t want to have after-school or summer jobs
Reality:
The number-one predictor for youth to have better employment success is a paid job during high school
Myth #4:
They don’t want to earn their own money
Reality:
Testimonial by Sarah, Customer Service, Sobeys-Ontario: “Work to me means that I am already starting to accomplish some of my life goals. I enjoyed being able to make decisions about what I would spend my money on.”
Myth #5:
They need to stay in high school until they’re 21
Reality:
They can graduate from Grade 12 with their peers and move on to post-secondary programs or employment
Myth #6:
They need too much support to participate in work experiences outside school
Reality:
56% of employers surveyed said workplace accommodations cost them little or nothing
Myth #7:
They don’t have life and work hopes and dreams
Reality:
They have future career aspirations that are often hindered by barriers to employment
There’s a lack of meaningful co-op opportunities for youth who have an intellectual and/or developmental disability compared to youth without disabilities.
The authors of a December 2022 paper titled Pathways to Paid Work for Youth with Severe Disabilities: Perspectives for Success published in the Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation noted, “paid work experiences during high school can foster employment skills, provide resume-building experiences, and facilitate linkages to employers that increase the likelihood that youth with severe disabilities will be employed following high school.”
Despite this, there’s a lack of meaningful co-op opportunities for youth who have an intellectual and/or developmental disability compared to youth without disabilities.
The Canadian Youth Success Strategy Project
Research findings
Research done in 2021 by ODEN explored the barriers to employment faced by youth who have a developmental disability. There were four key findings:
- Setting high expectations early at home matter.
- There is a lack of community-based experiential work options beyond the school walls.
- Intersecting identities create additional barriers for youth who have a developmental disability.
- Compared to their peers without disabilities, when they finish high school, youth who have a developmental disability do not have the same foundational skills employers are looking for in job candidates.
ODEN developed a series of virtual workshops to share the knowledge of this research. The sessions were delivered to more than 600 parents, caregivers and educators.
In 2022–23, ODEN advanced this work with a grant from the Canadian Association for Supported Employment (CASE) Innovation Lab and created the Canadian Youth Success Strategy Project (C-YSS).
Workshops and training
In 2023, ODEN trained six organizations in British Columbia, Manitoba and Nova Scotia to deliver the family-oriented workshop, Employment: The Gold Standard for Inclusion. Most of these organizations and other local employment service providers were trained on an Employment Discovery curriculum called jobPath©.
As well, 100 Disability Awareness and Confidence Training (DACT) licences have been made available to local businesses. All these activities and resources are meant to create local capacity for more inclusive hiring of youth who have a disability.
ODEN received a second year of funding from CASE and is now in year two of the C-YSS. We’re working in partnership with the YMCA of Greater Toronto, for which we’ve trained six local offices on presenting the Employment: the Gold Standard for Employment workshop. The YMCA will be hosting six local workshops during National Youth Week 2024 (May 1–7).
New resources being developed
ODEN is also working with DistinctAbility in Nova Scotia on the development of two new resources to support employment service providers and educators working with youth. These are designed to help:
- Meet unique challenges that remote and rural communities face in providing employment services
- Create opportunities for employment within social enterprises or entrepreneurship for youth who have a disability
And ODEN is developing a third resource. It will examine and address the intersectional barriers that youth who have disabilities face in preparing for and seeking out employment.
When youth are attached to the labour market early,

This is what we believe: When youth are attached to the labour market early, their long-term success in the world of work is greater. The C-YSS is one way we can all work together to make an impact on the success and employment of youth who have a disability.
But what can each of us do today and every day? Read on!
A call to action — to us all
Here are some ways we can all make a difference. If you’re:
A young person who has a disability, dream. Ask yourself what you want to be when you grow up. What are you good at? What do you enjoy and how could this become a paid job for you? Talk to your family, friends and teachers. Help them understand what’s important to you.
A family member or caregiver of a young person who has a disability. Think “What if?” when it comes to your expectations for their future. Do you see them participating in a day program or working in a paid job in your community? Raise your expectations for your child who has a disability, to expect they’ll:
- Participate in household chores
- Be included in accessible learning at their schools
- Access the same co-op, after school and summer job opportunities that their peers participate in
Also expect their future will include paid employment.
An educator supporting young people who have a disability. Ask yourself this: What opportunities exist in your school board for young people who have a disability to access meaningful co-op opportunities outside the school, in the community? If they don’t exist, why not and how can that be made possible?
An employment service provider, reflect on these questions:
- Do you provide job coaching and support to youth who have a disability?
- If you do, what does this look like?
- Is it only for youth who have graduated from high school, or also for those in high school?
- How is your youth supports program funded?
- If providing youth supports isn’t currently within your capacity, what are some of the barriers to changing that?
- How can your organization support more services for youth, and potentially include them in the work you do with businesses in your community?
An employer, do you hire youth:
- Who have a disability as part of co-op programs?
- For part-time, after school jobs; or for summer employment after they finish high school?
If you do:
- What does this look like and what are the benefits to your business?
- Do you share your experiences and information about these benefits with educators, parents, policymakers and other businesses?
If you don’t, why not?
ODEN can support your:
- Learning about the benefits of inclusive hiring
- Business on its journey to becoming an inclusive workplace
A policymaker who works on portfolios that impact youth in Ontario, bear in mind there’s a transformation happening in employment service delivery. This reshaping is changing how organizations can, and will, support Ontario job seekers who face barriers. And it may create inequity for young people who have a disability and need supports early so they can move towards a future that includes meaningful employment.
Part of the new system includes a threshold of employment hours. A person must work 20 hours before a supporting organization can receive payment for the services they delivered to make that job a success. This new requirement may dissuade service providers from providing job coaching for youth and other youth job supports — many youth (regardless of disability) don’t or can’t work 20 or more hours a week.
It means the new hours threshold could potentially remove access to much-needed support for youth who can and want to work part-time — creating the aforementioned inequity.
Funding for job coaches for youth varies from community to community. It’s often dependent on short-term grants that aren’t guaranteed year on year. Consider the return on investment if youth were supported early in employment versus being dependent on social assistance throughout their lives.
Have a listen to Episode 10 of ODEN’s You Can’t Spell Inclusion Without a D podcast. It goes well beyond what I’ve talked about in this post. It’s a great in-depth conversation about building a future for youth who have a disability. One that will get you thinking about a lot of things for both the present and future success of youth who have a disability, and what we can all do to make a difference in that.
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Dr. Jennifer Crowson, PhD, is a Diversity & Inclusion Specialist for the Ontario Disability Employment Network. She leads ODEN’s Canadian Youth Success Strategy initiative.