Intellectual Disability Awareness Month (IDAM) is celebrated annually in March. For 2025, the SA Federation for Mental Health (SAFMH) will be focusing on the theme: “Don’t leave me behind…understanding the challenges young persons with intellectual disability face” with the aim of highlighting the difficulties young persons (18-24 years old) with intellectual disability (ID) face, especially as they transition into adulthood.
It has been widely reported that the youth in South Africa are facing ever-mounting challenges and uncertainty. These challenges include unemployment, rising cost of living, a lack of opportunities, poverty and limited access to quality education. These challenges are significantly increased amongst youth with disabilities, including youth with ID .
Young persons with ID want to and can work, they just need the opportunity.
Young persons with ID face grievous exclusion when it comes to gaining employment. This marginalisation can be attributed to a number of reasons, including the myth that persons with disabilities cannot work. However, this is not the case at all, including for persons with ID.
People with intellectual disability aren’t not capable of doing stuff. You can’t label them for something they are … for their disability, when they are actually capable of so much more.” – Danel Botha
Danel Botha is 20 years-old and a resident at Cresset House, a community-based residential and day care facility for persons with intellectual disability. Danel loves the creative arts, to crochet and to read. She also swims in the Special Olympics, but her real passion is working with children and persons with disability. She said:
Persons with disability has been my passion since I was small. I went to a special school and there was this guy there and he was eight years old but he couldn’t talk or anything, he could only say mama and he called me mama. So I just grew a passion for persons with disability, not only persons with intellectual disability but all disabilities. My dream job is either as a care worker for children with disabilities, like kids from newborn to 12 years old, or I want to work with the elderly, or I want to work as an au pair or kindergarten teacher. Helping people has always been a dream for me.”
Cresset House runs a number of protective workshops, which are programmes and services provided by community – based NGOs, where persons with disabilities are provided with skills development programmes. Workshops offered by Cresset House include sports and recreation, woodwork and performing arts. They also have a bakery, where residents learn what it’s like to work in a real kitchen, which often caters for the local community as well. Danel explained:
We bake bread for our houses; last year we made jam and sometimes we make cookies and sell them to the parents for Christmas. We sometimes cut up vegetables, and we don’t only work in the bakery to just bake, we also do it to learn how to cook for ourselves. We’re also going to have a Cresset House MasterChef competition. I am very excited.”
The reality is that employment in the open-labour market remains elusive for young persons with ID and so the work of our Mental Health Societies, as well as other community-based organisations working with persons with ID, such as Cresset House, is very important. Programmes such as Cape Mental Health’s Training Workshops Unlimited (TWU), which provides a structured and purposeful daily programme, helps persons with ID develop life and work skills. The programme specifically also aims to help people with ID achieve their potential in the workforce.
Our call to action
SAFMH believes that young persons with ID deserve the same access and opportunities to education, skills development and employment as all South Africans. As such, intentional efforts must be made by the South African government to develop strategies and policies aimed at fostering and promoting meaningful paths of inclusion.
This includes working closely with high schools and universities to implement courses and specific training aimed at equipping youth with ID with skills and competencies to move forward into formal employment. Increased support for protective workshops will ensure that these facilities can sufficiently support and equip more young persons with ID to attain the highest levels of skills and move into the open labour market, where possible.” – Michel’le Donnelly, Project Leader: Advocacy & Awareness
SAFMH also encourages employers to consider employing young persons with ID. We encourage supported employment as best practice when it comes to working with and improving the lives of young persons with ID. This can help enable young persons with ID to achieve sustainable, long-term employment and create a more diverse work environment. SAFMH also encourages families to include young persons with ID in any decisions that are made about them and to recognise their autonomy and right to self-determination. In this regard we, as always, support the mantra of persons with disabilities: “Nothing about us without us!”.
Read this press release in Easy-to-Read format here.
*For more information, read our IDAM 2025 Concept Document here.
**For stories from young persons with ID, feel free to get in touch with SAFMH.
For enquiries, please contact:
Michel’le Donnelly – Project Leader: Advocacy & Awareness
CELL: +27 (0)79 799 6533
EMAIL: michel’le@safmh.org
