Link Up at the 18 year mark

Executive Director Bob Santos looks back at Link Up’s accomplishments and to the future

Dear Link Up employer partners, community agency partners, clients, former clients, friends of Link Up:

It is with a great deal of pride that I look back on Link Up Employment Services for Persons with Disabilities’ eighteen years of service to the community and especially to persons with disabilities.

Almost two decades on from Link Up’s start, the employment landscape has changed significantly for the better for job seekers with disabilities. Employment opportunities are more abundant, the workplace has grown more accessible and most importantly of all, there has been a big shift in attitude in favor of employing people with disabilities. I think I can say “we’ve come a long way” and moreover, that Link Up has played an important role in all of this positive change.

Link Up opens as the Training Coordinating Group – persons with disabilities gain missing skills
Link Up has had to adapt often over the years to meet the evolving demands of the labour market, the changing needs of job seekers with disabilities and shifting requirements of employers. When the organization first opened its doors in 1992, it was in response to a pressing need amongst working age Ontarians with disabilities for skills to qualify them for employment. Link Up, then known as the Training Coordinating Group and funded by the federal government, over the next two years proceeded to match hundreds of persons with disabilities to training and skills enhancement programs across Ontario. By 1994, Link Up was pleased to see significant increases in the numbers of disabled job seekers possessing marketable skills and qualifications. However, Link Up was also by then conscious of a growing new challenge facing these job seekers – a lack of employment despite their wealth of improved skills and qualifications.

Link Up fills another gap – specialized employment services are added to its roster
In 1994, with backing from the Ontario government, Link Up began to vigorously address this new problem. Specialized employment services for persons with disabilities were introduced and Link Up job developers began outreaching to the community and building trust relationships with employers. The fruits of these efforts also soon became evident – persons with disabilities in increasing numbers were being linked to jobs suited to their skills and abilities and employers in increasing numbers were gaining qualified new employees.

By 1995, Link Up’s reputation for excellent service, particularly its ability to so precisely match candidates’ qualifications to employers’ needs, had spread far and wide. Late in 1995, Link Up held a major job fair for persons with disabilities, Canada’s first. This event was a resounding success, with 100 employers participating, hundreds of job seekers with disabilities attending and the then federal Minister of Social Development providing the keynote speech. Many job seeking attendees were hired in followup to the event.

One stop shopping at Link Up
During this period, Link Up was approached by the federal government to lead a group of disability service providers in developing a new model of employment service delivery for persons with disabilities that would incorporate the most up-to-date best practices and technology of the time. The Toronto Consortium of Employment Services for Persons with Disabilities was formed to accomplish this goal. Out of the work of this Consortium a model was born and a pilot project, where Link Up would live the model, offering ‘one stop shopping’ to job seekers with disabilities, including vocational counseling services, training and employment services. Job seekers accessing the rolled out program often required all three services and would progress from identification of an employment goal, to skills enhancement and finally, skills intact, on to employment.

By 1999, Link Up’s work on behalf of persons with disabilities had come to the attention of the City of Toronto and City Council honored Link Up by presentation of its prestigious Access Award, an award given annually to an organization that has ‘significantly contributed to improving access for people with disabilities in the city of Toronto.’

Link Up shifts its focus to what’s most important – employment and employment retention
In 2000, Link Up made a decision to shift all of its attention to the most pressing of its clients’ needs – employment – and began concentrating all of its efforts on building enduring trust relationships with employers and on linking clients to jobs with these employers. Hardest-to-serve persons with disabilities were also at this time chosen as Link Up’s particular target group. Few other agencies were willing or even able to serve this especially needy subgroup of disabled job seekers and Link Up was (and remains) very willing and equally able. Link Up’s healthy increase in hires since its shift in focus underscores the correctness of this decision taken.

In 2004, in recognition of the critically important need for employed persons with disabilities to retain employment gained and to advance forward in their careers, Link Up began an ‘alumni’ program suited especially to the needs of employed persons with disabilities. This program was launched in the Fall of 2004 with David Onley (now Ontario’s Lieutenant Governor) as keynote speaker and since the launch, ongoing booster for the program. With assistance from several successfully employed former clients of Link Up, a workshop series was started up, covering such highly practical topics as business etiquette, work ethic, appreciation of work and employment, time and priority management and coping with change in the workplace. Networking between employed and job seeking attendees at workshops has been one exciting outcome of this program.

Link Up extends its excellent services to two new provinces and further north in Ontario
In 2005, Link Up realized a long held dream of extending its successful employment services model to the provinces of British Columbia and Manitoba, both with gaps in services especially to hard-to-serve job seekers with disabilities. Offices in Vancouver, BC and Winnipeg, Manitoba are today as thriving as Toronto is, with both provinces vigorously matching clients to jobs and Vancouver having already held its first Link Up Vancouver Job Fair, a highly successful event with over 20 employers at booths and more than 100 job seekers with disabilities visiting and making connections at those booths. In 2008, Link Up saw realization of another dream, opening of an office in the Regional Municipality of York, where a high and growing population of working age persons with disabilities reside. Link Up had in the past served these job seekers from a distance, but a physical presence has exponentially increased efficiency of service and has enabled Link Up to outreach to many more persons with disabilities in the area.

Health and Safety Awareness – Link Up addresses another long standing gap in services to persons with disabilities
In late 2005, Link Up launched its SafeAbility program, a health and safety awareness program aimed especially at persons with disabilities. This program, developed jointly by Link Up, the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board and a cross section of Greater Toronto Area disability service providers, was created to add to the employability of job seekers with disabilities and to the safety and health of working persons with disabilities. The ultimate goal of the program is to help reduce the unacceptably high numbers of workplace-caused accidents and illnesses occurring each year across Ontario. Trained organizations from all corners of the province today unanimously agree that the program is living up to its promise.

From Disabilities to Possibilities – helping to create a more ‘perfect union’ between employers and persons with disabilities
Link Up in 2007 gave employers yet another tool to add to their ‘kit’ when hiring, training and employing persons with disabilities. ‘From Disabilities to Possibilities’, a front-line manager’s guide to employing persons with disabilities, has been exceedingly well received by both private and public sector employers Ontario-wide, it is stocked by the Toronto Public Library and over recent months news of the guide have spread to other Canadian provinces, with orders now coming from Nova Scotia to Saskatchewan. Most thrilling, employers equipped with the guide are increasingly considering the world of possibilities offered by non-traditional sources of labour, especially persons with disabilities.

Thanks to all
Link Up, still full of passion at the 18 year mark, continues to seek new and better ways to serve its clients with disabilities, both job seeking and employed. Ever on the lookout for new best practices, advances in special needs technology and emerging labour market trends, Link Up strives to continually improve its employment services model, to help its clients with disabilities to the best possible extent.

Link Up owes many thanks – to its employer partners, to its fellow service providers and especially to its clients, who have taught us much. Thanks to all for helping Link Up live up to its mission to ‘provide the best employment services to all persons with disabilities’. We look forward to the next eighteen years.

Bob Santos, Executive Director
Link Up Employment Services for Persons with Disabilities