Disability employment · Research, training & practice
Where the practice is learned properly.
The College trains practitioners to a standard the field has rarely been able to teach. Customised Employment, Discovery and Employment Counselling, taught as disciplined practice rather than technique, grounded in the Centre’s framework tools and delivered in the format that works for you.
fidelity
WHAT THE TRAINING IS FOR
ACRE
Australia's only ACRE-accredited Customised Employment training
Credentialed programs: CE practitioner and employment counsellor
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Ways to learn: self-paced online, face to face on site, or hybrid
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Applied practice and research behind the curriculum
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+ yrs
The programs
Two credentialed pathways, one standard.
Both programs are grounded in the Centre’s framework tools, and both are taught by people who use them daily with clients, providers, business and government.
ACRE-accredited
Certified Customised Employment Practitioner
A credentialed pathway that takes practitioners from Discovery through to durable placement, at fidelity. Discovery is taught as a disciplined, evidence-informed process grounded in psychological insight, sensory-cognitive mapping and participant-centred engagement, not as a planning exercise.
ACRE Certificate of Achievement · nationally and internationally delivered
New program
Employment Counsellor Program
A clinical-grade counselling qualification for the fragile parts of the employment journey, built on PIE-CF: motivation, identity, anxiety, trauma cues and environmental fit, the elements standard CE programs leave out. For practitioners who hold people, not just place them.
Grounded in PIE-CF · psychologically-informed practice
01
Discovery
Learning the person before the job: disciplined enquiry, not assessment.
02
Australia · provider change · NDIS
Turning what you have learned into a defensible direction of work.
03
International · systems
Informational interviews and negotiated roles, not vacancy matching.
04
International · policy
Support, fit and career, built to hold after the placement is made.
Course specification
What the Customised Employment programme covers.
Duration
40 hours, self-paced
Structure
12 assessed modules
Assessment
Quizzes & practical tasks
Mentoring
Required & optional sessions
Materials
Workbooks, handouts, templates
On completion
ACRE Certificate of Achievement
- The twelve modules
- 01Understanding Customised Employment and Discovery
- 02Discovery and Social Capital
- 03Self-Advocacy
- 04Discovery Stage One
- 05Informational Interviews: Unlocking Skills and Employment
- 06Work Experience
- 07Job Development and Barriers to Employment
- 08Employers
- 09Self-Employment
- 10Self-Determination and Career Planning
- 11Post-Placement Planning and Support
- 12Systems Change: Embedding New Practice Models
Delivery
Learn on your own, or train the whole team.
- Individual · self-paced
Online
Work through the credentialed pathway at your own pace, with mentoring available on demand throughout. Suits practitioners studying alongside a full caseload.
- Groups & whole teams
Face to face, on site
Group training delivered in your workplace by a training associate in your state or region. The same curriculum, taught against your caseload, your participants and your operating conditions, so a whole team moves together rather than one practitioner at a time.
- Blended
Hybrid
Self-paced modules paired with face-to-face intensives, for services that want depth on the practice-critical elements without taking a team off the floor for days at a time.
- The College trains nationally and internationally, through training associates, experienced practitioners on the ground who extend its reach and keep the training personal to each setting, held to a common standard. Find a training associate →
Why this training is differen
Technique can be copied. Fidelity has to be built.
Most Customised Employment training teaches a sequence of steps. The College teaches the practice underneath it: why the steps work, when they fail, and what has to be true inside an organisation for them to hold. Grounded in the Centre’s applied research, continuous innovation and decades of practice.
Accreditation
ACRE-accredited
The Association of Community Rehabilitation Educators sets the international competency standard for Customised Employment. Ours is the only Australian training accredited against it, and graduates receive an ACRE Certificate of Achievement.
Listed on the ACRE training registry · Australia-wide
Model
Taught inside the equilibrium model
CE is taught as relational, ecological, systems-driven practice rather than a job-search technique, so practitioners understand what they are doing and why it holds.
Practice, not procedure
Organisational capability
CEQAF and CEOFECT
Fidelity that rests on one good practitioner does not survive their resignation. The College builds whole-of-organisation capability so quality holds at the service level.
Audited at practice and organisational levels
Context
Built for the Australian system
NDIS pricing structures, IEA operational guidance, ADE transformation and Australian employment policy sit inside the curriculum, so what is taught can actually be implemented.
Implementable, not aspirational
Contextualised internationally as well as locally: the College has trained practitioners working in very different labour markets, and the training is adapted to the setting rather than exported unchanged.
How you learn
Learning that survives contact with the job.
Evidence-based, practice-informed, and built to be used on Monday morning rather than filed after the assessment.
Materials
Current and well supported
An intuitive LMS with downloadable resources and video, kept current as practice and policy move. However you choose to learn, the material is the same and it stays maintained.
Substance
Skills, not letters
The point is not passing a course to add letters after your name. The curriculum is drawn from live delivery and demonstration practice, including the STRIDE regional deployment, where the full suite of framework tools was put to work and evidenced.
Support
You are not left alone
On-demand mentoring plus the Customised Employment Community of Practice: timely, real-world support from experts and peers, and from trainers who use these skills daily with clients, providers, business and government.
Two gatherings a year keep the community connected: the Customised Employment Conference each April, open to the whole field, and the invitation-only CE Practitioners’ Retreat each November.
What our students say
The change people report is rarely just technical.
“
I really enjoyed the CDERP course because of its person-centred approach to employment, which really aligns with my values. It looks at the person as a whole and aims to create a role with longevity and career development based on their particular skills and attributes … being able to access the course facilitators for mentoring throughout the course has been really valuable.
Ally
Perth
“
It is easy to study, interesting and practical. If we go by the responses of the people I told about Customised Employment, there is a demand for it in Kenya. I have so many questions about how this can be contextualised for a low income country with a high unemployment rate, no disability benefits, difficulty finding jobs even for people with minor disabilities.
Jane
Kenya
“
It’s reinvigorated my interest in employment outcomes for people living with disability and reminded me why I started working in this field in the first place … it has me thinking about the future again through a changed lens.
Chris
Tasmania
“
I guess I never really appreciated how much a job means to guys like Billy … With this training I feel inspired and motivated to work on a different level and have a bigger impact at empowering people with a disability. So to have the experience and training to be able to help him it almost brings a tear to my eye and I feel very blessed.
Gerry
Perth
- A fourth voice, from a provider staff participant in Canberra: “the outcomes that you would assume for clients would be so different to what you might have considered in the past.”
Enrol · enquire · train your team
Start where you are. Train to where the work needs you.
Whether you are beginning in employment support, deepening an established practice, or leading a service that needs a whole team trained together, there is a pathway here.
ACRE-accredited Customised Employment training, Discovery, and the Employment Counsellor Program. Delivered nationally and internationally.Whether you’re a practitioner, a provider redesigning under IEA, or a partner interested in becoming a training associate, start the conversation.
Programs
- CE Practitioner
- Employment Counsellor
- Group & on-site training
- Training associates
Community
- CE Conference
- Practitioners' Retreat
- Community of Practice
- Mentoring
Contact
- Enquire
- Provider change
- Media
- cderp.com.au
© 2026 CDERP College · Centre for Disability Employment Research and Practice