Positive about disabled people

As part of our implementation of equality policies and procedures to ensure services and opportunities are open to all it has been identified that we wish to attract more disabled staff to Wealden. Wealden has become a Disability Symbol user as this should help us towards this aim and create a more diverse workforce.

The commitments Wealden has made by using this symbol are as follows:

To interview all applicants with a disability who meet the minimum criteria for a job vacancy and consider them on their abilities.

To ensure there is a mechanism in place to discuss at any time but at least once a year, with disabled employees what we and they can do to make sure they can use and develop their abilities.

To make every effort when employees become disabled to make sure they stay in employment.

To take action to ensure that all employees develop the appropriate level of disability awareness needed to make our commitments work.

To review five commitments and what has been achieved to plan ways to improve them and let employees and the Employment service know about future plans.

Some of the policies we have developed so far may be attractive to disabled people such as flexible working, job-sharing, home working. We can work together with our Occupational Health adviser and the Disability service team at Jobcentre Plus to offer advice on adapting workstations and financial help may be obtained as appropriate. It is important that we continue to work towards improving our services in this area.