Abstract:

At the Politecnico di Milano, MultiChancePoliTeam (MCPT) is a group of specialists who provide specific services and personalized support to all students with disabilities. These services are aimed to encourage professionalism, individual autonomy and social inclusion, with no special treatment in the assessment of the skills that were actually acquired. In particular, MCPT guarantees psycho-educational counseling, ICT devices and assistive technology, campus accessibility, tutoring, employment support and international mobility. Specialists plan individual interviews in order to accommodate the requests of students with disabilities, addressing their needs, designing the most appropriate solutions, thereby facilitating their integration and fruition of the overall educational offer of the University.

Support continues in the phase of intermediation with the job market. Italian law 68/99 (rules for labor law for persons with disability) regulates and promotes job placement and professional integration of disabled people through support services and targeted employment, which application is modulated and tailored on the company’s specific actuality. The article presents a successful model for employment, a path in four phases, designed, implemented and validated over time since 2003 on these principles. As a result, it facilitates the matching of supply and demand, both for pre-degree internships, post-graduate stage and work placement of students with a percentage of disability above 46%. Interested parties would be both private and public companies. The working model contributes to raise awareness among companies on social responsibility and specially on being able to consider the disabled person as a resource. Politecnico di Milano creates a network of targeted and territorial partnership.
Thanks to our experience - and to the ICF* (ICF star) model defined at Politecnico di Milano as an extension of the WHO ICF model (The World Health Organization International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health) - it has been possible to create two tools: the “Worker Checklist” and the “Company Checklist”, which are being shared with other Italian universities and with interested companies, in order to facilitate job placement. We selected the items list using the ICF as a reference, adapting it to the technological equipment of the University’s facilities, the specificity of the subjects taught and the needs of students.

The article highlights the results achieved in recent years, crossing demographic data of students, degree course, type of disability and sector of employment. Over the last 8 years, students with disabilities who obtained a Technical degree, a Master degree or a Doctoral degree at the Politecnico di Milano (Engineer) have been employed in 100% of cases. The article, finally, analyzes critical issues and areas for improvement. We consider our experience to be a successful case study that has created a set of high valued best practices to be shared.

Keywords:

Employment service, disability, ICF, social inclusion.