1. Hello / Guten Tag /Bonjour / Ciao

2. Who we are: Shane McCarthy Scott O’ Hara

3. Where we come from: We live in Cork in southern Ireland. This is the Cork Crest Cork is here

4. What we do: We are in secondary school. Our school is called Scoil Bernadette. We are in our final year and we are studying for our Leaving Certificate Applied exams. This is our school crest.

5. The Barriers we identified:

6. Attitudes / Awareness/ Perception Some employers are impatient as they don’t understand our disabilities. We have low expectations of ourselves and think ‘I will never get a job” Some people label us as ‘special’ and this makes us feel different.

7. Structural / Administrative: Having the disability allowance can lead to a lack of motivation to get a job. If you get a full-time job you can loose your disability allowance and so you might not think it is worth it.

8. Environment / Physical / Accessibility: It can be hard if you live in the countryside and have to travel to the city to get training. There should be community based training available. If you are not used to public transport it can be hard to have to use it all on your own to get to work or training.

9. Education / Training: Students worry that when they leave school to go to training centers that there will not be enough support there for them. Many students have a fear of the change / transition that is ahead of them.

10. Resources / Opportunities: Students feel that there are limited options available to them after school. For example in our school it is assumed that you will go on to Doras or the BTC training centres, but what if you want to go somewhere else??

11. Accessibility: Some students feel that they might be at a disadvantage in a job interview because of their disability and because they went to a special school.

12. State of the economy: The disability allowance has been cut to many families. It is harder to get work experience because of the recession. There is not enough work for those already employed. There have been cutbacks to the funding of courses and staff such as SNA’s which will impact negatively on some students.

13. Thank you / Danke / Merci