The services for supported employment for persons with disability in Scotland: Interview with Jamie Rutherford

Abstract

The authors present an interview with Jamie Rutherford, performance manager of Enable Works, department of the not for profit organization Enable Scotland, providing services for the supported employment of persons with disabilities. The interview with Rutherford draws a picture of an organization, since many years engaged in the construction of territorial services in Scotland, moving from a perspective aimed to rehabilitate/cure the person with disability to a perspective aimed to build competences within productive activities. For Rutherford the working inclusion represents an useful end to promote the social integration of persons with disabilities that poses the families and the persons with disabilities in front of opportunities and risks related to get in touch with contexts lived by the families as “not protected”. Within the interview Rutherford deals with these issues reflecting of the complex relationship between the families, the territorial services, the local authorities and the local community. Relationships in which the families express emotions such as distrust, displacement, fear towards the changing and the difficulty in making plans for the future. In this regard Rutherford proposes to develop services aimed to go along the families in a reliable way helping them to build objectives and social relationships rather than to cure the disability of the person. Finally the interviewee explores the topic of the transition from school to work highlighting that organizing interventions within the schools can reduce social isolation and prevent the marginalization of persons and families with disabilities.