• Expanding opportunities for participants with disabilities (increasing hard/soft skills) to gain better access to the labor market instead of working in a protected environment such as a sheltered workshop because they have demonstrated competency in real work based on work provided by SMEs, i.e., the labor market.
   

• Increased collaboration between the labor market and sheltered workshops. 
   

• Increased use of competency-based methods / assessment competitions in vocational education and training. The project will enable sharing of good practices between different European countries. An example of an ECVET-compliant assessment method will be presented and used

• 
  A diversity management handbook, providing guidance to SMEs and other interested organizations on what is known as "Corporate Social Responsibility." By including corporate social responsibility in their policies, support and awareness will be created throughout the organization regarding the added value with regard to including this target group in the SME. Partnerships should realize that there are opportunities to build a diverse employee population and make use of all possible talents available in a society. The workforce is so diverse that there are opportunities within every organization.

In many countries, organizations must meet a set quota to employ people with disabilities. In the Netherlands, for example, the Participation Act was introduced in 2015, but it turns out that the goals mentioned in the law are difficult to achieve. In addition, the Council of Europe created an action plan (2006-2015) to promote the rights and participation of people with disabilities in society. The EU adopted this strategy for people with disabilities in 2010-2020. However, people with disabilities still face many difficulties in finding jobs due to negative stereotypes, which make the labor market reluctant to hire such people

The SKILLS + project supports the goals of these political priorities and addresses some of the key issues that lead to what is, in fact, overt discrimination.
To achieve this, we want to:
Improve the knowledge and basic skills of persons with employment disabilities and provide them with the skills to enter the open labor market; assessment of skills should become fully transparent through the use of an INGOTS certificate recognized by ECVET. People with labor disabilities have many skills, but are often poorly certified or not certified at all because of early school leaving due to social and/or medical reasons. This increases the gap with the labor market, while ECVET-compliant and EQF-related certification increases job opportunities.

Increase the number of employed people with disabilities in the (sheltered market) by exchanging knowledge on methods and strategies more widely in the EU and preparing them for the open labor market. This involves skills training, connecting and motivating employers.