[Pictured left to right: Ross McLatchie FIEP, Peter Bacon FIEP, Lauren Peacock MIEP, Scott Parkin FIEP, James Weait FIEP]
In a landmark collaboration designed to drive professional standards forward in Australia, the Institute for Employability Professionals (IEP) has joined forces with Disability Employment Australia (DEA). This partnership marks a significant milestone in the pursuit of excellence and inclusion within the employability sector, with a shared vision to unlock the full potential of people with disabilities in the workforce.
At the heart of this partnership lies a commitment to quality improvement and professional standards enhancement. As Peter Bacon FIEP, CEO of DEA, says “we recognise that the ceiling for disability employment practitioners in Australia is very high, but we need to put a floor in place – as recommended by the Disability Royal Commission. However, this does not mean that we want something overly prescriptive (like ill-fitting Level IV qualifications) to be mandated, rather there should be a flexible approach to continuing professional development which draws on the best of a range of organisations”.
This approach to collaboration is already in evidence, with IEP Global CEO Scott Parkin FIEP presenting the new IEP Quality Improvement Framework (QIF) at the DEA Leadership Forum in Sydney on March 27. This was a timely contribution given the introduction of a new Quality Framework within the Disability Employment Service (DES) at the start of the year, recognising that providers are grappling with the balance between service excellence and compliance activity. By complementing existing quality assurance mechanisms, the QIF empowers organisations to adopt evidence-backed practices, thereby elevating quality standards across the sector.
DEA and IEP have previously worked together on responses to government consultations, including regarding the mooted Disability Centre for Excellence. This submission drew on IEP’s experience setting up a Global Centre for Employability Excellence. The DEA-IEP vision for a Centre of Excellence in Disability Employment aims to bridge the gap between research and practice, ensuring that disability employment strategies are informed by evidence and co-designed with the active involvement of people with disabilities.
Importantly, DEA and IEP have worked together to ensure that training offers are aligned and complementary, rather than competitive. IEP has a broad suite of employability offerings, encompassing both mainstream and more specialist offerings (such as First Nations). DEA’s approach builds on this and is avowedly and proudly specialist, with its Fundamentals for DES microcredential (launched in November 2023) specifically designed to enhance practitioner skills in DES, responding to DSS’s new Quality Framework (and informed by DSS contributions to the co-design process).
Scott Parkin FIEP, Global CEO of IEP, stated “We see ourselves as General Practitioners, with a strong range of globally evidenced-based training packages across the employability spectrum, and DEA as surgeons – aiming for excellence in a specialist, but nevertheless critically important, field. We are proud to be working in partnership, to help drive forward our shared objectives and foster global collaboration to facilitate the exchange of ideas, insights, and effective strategies”.
