News from Berlin – Many companies from Berlin have been giving people with disabilities career chances. However, prejudices are still wide spread. The ‘Inclusion-prize’ is meant to show solutions particularly to smaller companies. The President of the State Office for Health and Social Welfare (LaGeSo) had an interview with the Berliner Morgenpost in which he explained the benefits not only to the disabled community but also to the companies who empower them. The LaGeSo has now awarded businesses that apply the equality and incorporation of severely disabled employees in a best practice manner for the 12th time.

LaGeSo’s President Franz Allert explains that the State Office in Berlin on the one hand gives dignity to disabled persons with the prize businesses by enabling career chances for them in those businesses. On the other hand the examples of the best-practice businesses awarded show other businesses that severely handicapped employees are also top performers and contribute to the economic success of their firms. The degree of awareness surrounding the Inclusion-Prize has also risen: in the beginning there were only 3-7 applications a year, but in the last several years 40-65 applications have been received annually by the Ministry for Integration. Since 2012 the prize has been been awarded in the categories of small, medium and large enterprises. Particularly the large quantity of small and medium enterprises should be encouraged through this differentiation, to spread awareness of the individual solutions available for the professional inclusion of handicapped persons.

The inclusion of handicapped people in the workplace is also on the UN’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities’ agenda.

News from Berlin - Berlin Global