Posted By Andrew Böber I am curious if any one has an employee, or work experience / volunteer, with Downs Syndrome specifically within the agricultural sector. Trying to gauge this with respects to DED which comes into full force in December 2006. What I am interesting to learn is what learning and supervision support is need for such a disability set against such a high-risk environment and resolutions can be made when such problems are solved. Andrew John Robertson Böber

Posted By J Knight I would agree with the advice from Cathy, which is to seek further advice, but I would strongly advise against expecting general solutions to working with people with Down's syndrome or indeed any other disability. People with learning disabilities are as varied in their competencies and attributes as anybody else, and it is all down to individual assessment. I'll get off mi soapbox now; blame 15 years of working with care sector employres, John

Posted By Jim Walker As others mention, each person (as are we all) needs individual assessments as to their capabilities. I have experiences of one bloke in a factory where I used to work. He was taken on as a trial, sweeping the factory floors but soon moved onto production. He was considered one of the best folks on the shop floor who were doing very repetitive work. It took extra time and initial supervision to train him in a task but once trained he always did the job exactly to requirements with no deviations. He often spotted component faults that QA inspectors had missed. Equally with safety, he never ever broke the safety "rules" and would tell people off if he saw them committing breaches. I remember fondly him playing hell with a senior director because he was not wearing safety glasses out on the shop floor and the acute embarrassment of the said director. Initially there was some minor teasing but once he had a few friends who looked after him that stopped and he was probably the most popular person in the place.