Development of supported employment in Malaysia

Abstract

The collaboration between Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and Malaysia Department of Social Welfare (DSW) from 2005 to 2015 has contributed to the development of supported employment in Malaysia. Supported Employment is strategies and techniques to help persons with disabilities working in integrated work settings. During the project, the training packages and implementing schemes were developed under the collaborative work by DSW, JICA and Malaysian leaders in the field of work support for persons with disabilities. As a result of the collaborative project, a total of 2,398 participants have attended 3 days' course or 4 days' course of job coach training as of 2019. From 2012 to 2018, a total of 956 persons with disabilities have been employed with job coach service program by a total of 543 companies. A total of 329 job coaches were involved in supporting these PWDs. The initiative of supported employment in Malaysia seems to be successful, but further researches are needed to improve the quality of job coach training and job coach service program.