European Qualification Profile of Job Coach for Persons with Disabilities

Presented below European qualification concept is the result of the cooperation of theinternational partners coming from Germany, Netherlands, France, Poland and United Kingdom, who together have realized Erasmus + project entitled Job coach for persons with disabilities. Strategic partnerships in vocational education and training (2015-2018). The person who assists individuals with disabilities to find and maintain employment using supported employment services, or working out of the official support system, has been referred to by a number of different titles, among other - job coach.The main objective of the idea to prepare internationally recognized qualification profile for the further education and training of job coaches at the European level, was to facilitate the social and economic inclusion of the people with mental disabilities. These people are on a distant position to labour market usually only because of their health status quo. Together with other disfavoured groups, they are subject of the services of supported employment,which implements active forms of support – the help to find and maintain job on open labour market. The project team have agreed that disabled people represent special target group of the clients of supported employment, thus also need support of special kind of professionals who can assist them with their career development.The employment situation of disabled people in different EU countries is not equal;differences exist in national law regularities containing supported employment, in business practices and culturally determined family and social surroundings, as well as in behavioural patterns towards employing disabled persons. Different is development of institutional networks, NGOs and public-private partnerships aimed on support these group, etc.This paper focuses how to use existing qualification European procedures for the creation internationally recognized new qualification of job coach, hopefully useful for enhancing employment opportunities of disabled persons.