Disability employment · Research, training & practice
Building the practice that durable employment depends on.
The Centre trains the practitioners and develops the framework tools behind high-fidelity employment practice, forged in disability employment and now working across the wider system, and researches how providers change to deliver it well.
CDERP College · Practitioner training
Where disability employment practitioners are made.
The College develops the workforce durable employment depends on: practitioners trained to a standard the field has rarely been able to teach. Two programs, both grounded in the Centre's framework tools.
Certified Customised Employment Practitioner
Australia's only ACRE-aligned Customised Employment training: a credentialed pathway that takes practitioners from Discovery through to durable placement, at fidelity.
Course detail and dates →Employment Counsellor Program
A clinical-grade counselling qualification for the fragile parts of the employment journey, grounded in the Centre's PIE-CF framework, for practitioners who hold people, not just place them.
Course detail and dates →Course dates, fees and enrolment
Program detail, upcoming intakes and enrolment are all handled on the College site.
Events · the CE community
Two gatherings a year.
Customised Employment Conference
An annual symposium for the Customised Employment community and the wider employment system, deliberately capped at around fifty so that everyone in the room can speak. The 2027 theme takes on why capable providers deliver less than they know how to.
The CE Practitioners' Retreat
A closed, invitation-only retreat for CE practitioners and trainers, a working intensive where the people carrying the practice sharpen their craft and keep the standard alive between them.
The framework tools
Practice holds when the system around it is in equilibrium.
Developed across more than a decade in disability employment, where fidelity, organisational maturity and integrative practice were forced to a higher standard, the Centre's framework tools are how practice reaches for that equilibrium. They make fidelity teachable, auditable, and real in delivery. Built in disability employment, the methodology now travels across the wider employment system: mainstream services and the systems that commission and evaluate them.
The equilibrium systems model of employment names the condition durable employment depends on. It belongs to the field, not to any one provider; the Centre's tools are how practice moves toward it.
The five integrative functions a practitioner holds across the whole employment journey.
A clinical-grade counselling framework for fragile employment journeys, the spine of the Employment Counsellor Program.
A method for working with families as active participants in Discovery and transition.
A fidelity audit, developed in customised employment and applied across service delivery, mapping practice quality across defined domains.
An organisational maturity instrument auditing the conditions under which high-fidelity practice can be sustained.
The tools are designed to work as one system: trained through the College, audited in practice, evidenced in the field.
Participant, family and Discovery measures that turn practice into a defensible evidence base, the data behind fidelity claims.
Research & consulting
Research, provider change, and the work that travels.
The Centre's roots are in disability employment, where fidelity, provider change and integrative practice were forced to a higher standard. That depth is what lets the work travel: into mainstream employment services, national model development, and international systems engagements, in Australia and abroad.
STRIDE: high-fidelity Customised Employment in regional Australia.
In partnership with Devonfield Enterprises and funded through the Structural Adjustment Fund (DSS), STRIDE built a credentialed regional Customised Employment workforce, deployed the Centre's full suite of framework tools in live practice, and produced a published evidence base. It stands as one of the most complete demonstrations of what high-fidelity practice looks like, and a working reference for providers changing under the Inclusive Employment Australia transition.
Live engagements: Australian and international. International work delivered in partnership with Asuria.
Workforce Australia · IEFF
The Integrative Employment Function Framework, developed as a candidate model for Workforce Australia's redesign, contributed through a service provider partner as the system moves beyond one-size-fits-all.
Inclusive Employment Australia
Direct work with NDIS employment providers redesigning practice under IEA: the Centre's framework tools put to work so capability holds, not just compliance.
Republic of Korea · MOEL / KEIS
A systems-comparison report and design guidance for Korea's Ministry of Employment and Labor, benchmarking procurement and performance evaluation in employment services across Australia, the UK and Sweden, delivered with Asuria.
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia · First Job Guarantee
Invited expert contribution to the Global Labour Market Conference 2026 (Riyadh) on the design of a national First Job Guarantee framework, with an architecture test in development with local partners.
Working through a change of your own?
Provider redesign under Inclusive Employment Australia, a fidelity audit, an evaluation, or research with the Centre. Tell us where the pressure is and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right call.
How the Centre works
Training and research, held together.
The Centre's work runs on two tracks that feed each other: a training arm that builds the workforce, and consulting research that keeps the practice honest. Direct employment provision sits with a separate associate.
CDERP College
ACRE-aligned Customised Employment training and the Employment Counsellor Program, delivered nationally and internationally through local training associates.
Explore the College →The Centre's research practice
Applied research across disability and mainstream employment and provider change: demonstration, evaluation, and the evidence base behind the framework tools.
See the research →Latest from the Centre
Recent work.
STRIDE: high-fidelity CE in regional Australia
A short briefing on what high-fidelity Customised Employment looks like in regional practice: the workforce credentialing, the multi-instrument evidence base, the operational adaptations, and the developmental edges.
Request the briefing →Stable Underperformance as a Systems Design Outcome
How employment systems entrench mediocre outcomes through their own design features, and the architectural moves that interrupt the pattern. Authored by Dr Peter Smith.
About the paper →
Work with the Centre
Train your people. Change your practice. Build what holds.
Whether you're a practitioner, a provider redesigning under IEA, or a partner interested in becoming a training associate, start the conversation.