A WOMAN OF HER OWN - Advancing the Working Life Skills of Women with Disabilities is a joint project between KTO, TUAS, Autismisäätiö and Kehitysvammaliitto, the most important objective of which is to develop a workshop model for the improvement of disabled women and girls’ work ability. The aim is to prevent the social exclusion of disabled women and promote their societal involvement.

The project’s primary target group is disabled women who experience difficulties in apprehension, communication and mental health, which manifest themselves as behavioural challenges, among others. The secondary target group is people working in health care and social services, education and employment services; they can utilize the workshop as a new service model that will augment the competence required for strengthening and supporting the work abilities of disabled women.

The development of the workshop model will be implemented through the project partners organizing workshop groups in their own areas (Southwest Finland and Uusimaa), with project planners and associates assigned by the partner acting as the group leaders. The disabled women will be the central actors in the groups as experts by experience. The experts by experience will develop the workshop model in cooperation with professional experts. Peer support will be utilized to enhance the work abilities and self-esteem of disabled women. Work ability consists of social skills, the use of social media as well as planning and organizational skills. A plain language guide will be produced at the end of the project.

The results of the project are

1. improving the work ability and overall performance of disabled women and girls on the individual level,
2. simultaneously promoting their equal standing in society, as well as
3. developing a workshop to advance these goals. The workshop model can be replicated to strengthen the inner resources of other types of people with special needs.