Joseph, an young adult with cerebral palsy, reflects on his experiences with employment services, internships, and his ongoing job search

I am Joseph Issa and I have mild cerebral palsy and low vision. I have a Bachelor of Criminology Sub, Majoring in Policing from Western Sydney University. During 2019 to 2021, I was a client of a Disability Employment Service (DES). Their attempts to assist me in finding employment, given my physical disability, were very challenging. One challenge was that they had only one employment coach for several clients with different kinds of disabilities, making it hard to find jobs tailored to them individually.

The jobs they suggested mostly involved physical labour, such as working as a waiter in a restaurant. These jobs may be good for someone with some other type of disability, but not for someone like me who has a physical disability, uses a walker, and cannot carry plates with food. Instead, I would be better suited to office jobs such as administration roles.

I applied for a school administration job and was rejected based on my limited experience. As an client of my DES, I advocated to get them to support me with finding a job even though I had to do most of the work. In 2021, they connected me with the NSW Government Graduate Program during a disability recruitment drive.

In mid-2021, I applied for the NSW Government Graduate program and had to do a cognitive ability assessment called Ravens Advanced Progressive Matrices. Instead of doing the assessment, I did a 15-minute interview which required me to answer a behavioural and situational question. I didn’t do so well in the first attempt, as I needed more time to prepare, so I made another attempt. In my second attempt, they were going to provide the two questions five minutes beforehand. However, they provided the questions only one minute beforehand, so I tried my best to answer those questions. I failed to progress to the next stage.

That same year, through the efforts of my employment coach, I was able to get a six-month NSW Police Force State Intelligence and Governance Command internship. During this internship, I was able to develop skills in writing Intelligence Reports and Alerts, reading crime trends, and writing a crypto wallet typology and a summary document defining the Metaverse.

However, the internship did not convert to a full-time position as there were some extenuating circumstances such as management changes and the resignation of my employment coach. I then took a broader approach with seeking work, trying some other channels and building my experience through internships.

I asked the relevant manager at NSW Police Force who their DES is. Once I learned which DES is relevant to their recruitment, I switched to that service instead and applied for NSW Police Force administration and intelligence analyst roles. Separately, I completed internships including a Service NSW internship as a Clerk Graduate doing administration work and a National Disability Insurance Agency internship with the Fraud Fusion Taskforce, supporting them in a user story project.

I also applied for the Australian Federal Police graduate program twice and an Investigative Assistant role. Despite doing these internships and applying for these roles, I was not able to get full-time employment. I believe that some organisations are not offering reasonable adjustments to their recruitment process for people with physical disabilities, which makes it challenging to secure full-time employment even with demonstrable experience.

My position is that government and corporate organisations should allow the applicant to ask for feedback and give some advice to them about how they could improve their recruitment processes for people with physical disabilities. This could include offering the hiring manages advice about what strategies could help people with physical disabilities do well in the application process. 

For more information about schooling and entering the workforce as a person with cerebral palsy, My CP Guide hosts a variety of information resources that can be applicable for people of all ages. Browse the Education and Work sections to learn more, or check out our downloadable resource Navigating the employment journey for people with cerebral palsy