The voluntary and community sector (VCS) contains over 162,000 registered charities as well as a large number of unregistered not-for-profit organisations, associations, self-help groups and community groups. The sector includes small community-based organisations with no paid staff through to large charities with thousands of paid staff and multi-million pound incomes. Drake (1996) chronicles the development of the charitable sector, from its roots in the wake of the industrial revolution through to the modern day. He outlines how the sector has adapted according to social changes, successfully transforming itself from having principally a shelter and alms-giving function to being a modern day major service provider, typically in response to government funded contracts.

The VCS is much larger than might generally be thought. For example the sector in 2002 had:

• • a total income of £20.8 billion and an operating expenditure of £20.4 billion;

• • assets totalling £70.1 billion;

• • a workforce comprising 569,000 paid employees;

• • a contribution of £7.2 billion to UK Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (NCVO, 2004).

Despite the particular challenges and difficulties the sector might face, we will see that it clearly has much potential to improve the employment prospects of disabled people both by being an inclusive employer and by offering volunteering activities as a pathway to developing work related skills. There are also direct opportunities to promote inclusive employment through a range of service delivery activities, such as delivering Jobcentre Plus programmes or running a Direct Payments scheme.

In this chapter, I will focus mainly on the voluntary and community sector (VCS) who work in the field of ‘disability’, and especially those organisations providing employment related services. Looking at the activities of the larger VCS organisations, I will consider how helpful they are in promoting the employment of disabled people, particularly in the light of the ‘targeting’ of this sector by the government to deliver a variety of employment support programmes for disabled people. Finally, examining the experience of organisations run by disabled people themselves over the last 20 years, as well as the track record of the ‘disability charities’, I will be asking why valuable lessons about employing disabled people are apparently being ignored by policy makers and practitioners alike.