The Centre for Disability Employment Research and Practice (CDERP) was established over a decade ago as Australia’s independent Centre of Excellence in employment systems design. Grounded in disability employment but intentionally applicable across labour markets, CDERP was formed in response to a persistent challenge in employment policy and practice: despite sustained reform and high levels of service activity, many employment systems continue to produce outcomes that plateau over time rather than improving cumulatively.

Born out of the need to close the enduring gap between research, policy, and frontline practice, CDERP develops applied, system-level solutions to complex employment challenges. Our work equips practitioners, informs policymakers, supports employers, and strengthens the capacity of individuals and families to navigate work in real-world conditions marked by uncertainty, transition, and change.

While our origins sit firmly within disability employment, our remit has always been broader. Contemporary employment systems, whether disability-specific or mainstream, face shared structural pressures including fragmented funding, short-term incentives, risk displacement, workforce churn, and limited mechanisms for sustaining job quality and progression over time. Disability employment, shaped by the NDIS and successive DES reforms, provides a high-resolution lens through which these dynamics are most visible. CDERP operates at this intersection, translating insight from disability employment into system-level approaches relevant to youth transitions, workforce participation, and inclusive labour-market reform more broadly.

Our work is grounded in applied research and informed by an extensive international network. We design evidence-driven frameworks that are deeply contextualised to the Australian policy environment while benchmarked against global best practice, including Australia’s commitments under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This dual focus ensures our work remains both locally actionable and internationally credible.

At the core of CDERP’s contribution is a systems view of employment. We position Customised Employment not as a discrete practitioner technique, but as a whole-of-system strategy capable of reshaping how employers, services, and funding structures interact. Across this work, CDERP identifies and formalises the integrative employment function — the relational, psychological, and coordination work that enables employment pathways to hold together across uncertainty, transition, and change. Through the integration of the Psychologically Informed Employment Counselling Framework (PIE-CF), alongside organisational fidelity and quality tools such as CEOFECT and CEQAF, we address both the technical and human dimensions of employment. This creates conditions where individuals build not only vocational capability, but also the psychological, relational, and environmental capacity required for sustainable participation in work.

These ideas are operationalised through our training and capacity-building programs delivered via CDERP College. CDERP College exists to ensure that integrative employment work is professionalised, governed, and transferable, rather than reliant on informal skill or individual goodwill.

Our portfolio includes specialist qualifications in Customised and disability employment, anchored by the CDERP Customised Employment Professional (CCEP) certification. This program has been developed in partnership with Griffin-Hammis Associates, the global pioneers of Customised Employment, and is formally accredited by the Association of Community Rehabilitation Educators (ACRE), the international body responsible for defining and stewarding professional competencies in Customised and supported employment.

CDERP College is the only training provider outside the United States accredited by ACRE. This role positions CDERP as a bridge between international evidence-informed practice and the Australian policy and service environment, ensuring that workforce development remains aligned with globally recognised competencies while being rigorously contextualised to systems such as the NDIS and disability employment reform in Australia. Alignment with APSE competencies and continuous refinement through emerging research and practitioner feedback ensures that training remains both credible and responsive to system change.

Beyond workforce development, CDERP works directly with service providers, governments, and system leaders to support implementation at scale. Through our Work First Customised Employment partnerships, we assist organisations to embed high-fidelity Discovery and Customised Employment practice. Work First also functions as a practice-based testbed, enabling CDERP to observe how policy settings, funding incentives, organisational behaviour, and lived experience interact in real time. This continuous feedback loop strengthens system design, ensuring that frameworks and tools remain grounded, responsive, and ethically governed.

Complementing this work, CDERP’s financial modelling, organisational fidelity tools, and the Equilibrium Systems Model of Employment (ESME) are used to align provider behaviour, funding incentives, and outcome expectations. These tools are increasingly applied beyond disability-specific programs, offering a transferable framework for addressing persistent outcome plateaus across employment systems.

CDERP’s impact has been recognised internationally. The Zero Project has affirmed that CDERP’s work is directly aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, noting our contribution to “a more just, equitable, and inclusive society, a world with zero barriers” (August 2024).

In an era where employment systems demand solutions that are empirically grounded, ethically robust, and operationally viable, CDERP offers a rare combination of academic rigour and practice-proven design. We work at the point where evidence meets implementation, and where disability employment informs the future of work more broadly. We partner with governments, organisations, and communities to rethink employment systems, strengthen workforce participation, and deliver outcomes that endure across programs, sectors, and labour markets.