Let’s focus on what people with special needs can do, rather than what they can’t | Letters

As a retired special school headteacher, I warmly welcome Alan Milburn’s proposal to expand supported internships for young people with special educational needs and disabilities (Turbocharge special needs internships to help tackle UK youth jobs crisis, says Milburn, 16 August). For too long society has concentrated on what these young people cannot do rather than what they can, with the right support and opportunity.

I often meet former students who, once established in a workplace, have not only held down jobs but progressed to positions of greater responsibility.

If Milburn’s proposals help shift the question from “What can’t this young person do?” to “What could they do with the right support?”, they deserve wholehearted backing. Young people with special needs do not need diminished expectations. They do deserve the opportunity to show what they can contribute.
Pete Crockett
Royal Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire

Alan Milburn should pay more attention to the £2.5bn of national insurance contribution (NIC) exemptions for employers taking on young workers under 21 and apprentices under 25. Only the second is mentioned in passing in his interim report. Neither is included in its total spending on employment for young people. Adding these to the Department for Work and Pensions employment service costs would have very significantly reduced the 25 to 1 ratio of benefits to employment that has been so much publicised in the media.

Take-up rates for these reliefs introduced in 2015 do not appear to exist. HMRC-commissioned surveys revealed that over half the 340,000 employers claiming young workers NIC exemptions were not aware that they were.

Milburn could switch the resources to specific funding of jobs and apprenticeships to provide better, more visible incentives. This could lead to more than the “modest impact” of the only partly known funding at present.
Adrian Sinfield
Edinburgh

If my experience of just one young person with special needs being employed by a major hotel group is anything to go by, we should be emphasising the value that these young people bring to the workplace and what an incredible asset they can be. A young woman was waitressing at breakfast in a high-end hotel recently. She was very good at her job, really efficient with such a smile and great spirit. She clearly loved her job. None of the surly service you sometimes get from someone who feels the job is “below” them.

We had a chat and she told me that she was neurodiverse and all about the project that supported her into this job. Chatting with her made me feel that employers were missing out on employing some of their best staff if they don’t get involved with projects providing supported internships. As these young people are so highly motivated, they return the investment in bucket loads.
Joy McLaughlan
London