A Scoping Review of the Contextual Factors Impacting Employment in Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Purpose of ReviewIndividuals with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD) are unemployed and underemployed at staggering rates and experience challenges associated with employment procurement. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) is a biopsychosocial framework of health that includes contextual factors and their influence on health and health-related states. This article examines the contextual factors—environmental and personal—impacting employment procurement for individuals with NDD to aid in the understanding of current facilitators and barriers. Employing the Arksey & O’Malley framework, a scoping review of the literature was conducted. Findings were categorised based on the ICF’s contextual domains and were further classified as facilitators or barriers toward employment procurement.Recent FindingsForty-one articles met the inclusion criteria. The environmental factors ‘Support and relationships’, ‘Attitudes’ and ‘Services, systems and policies’ were found to be both facilitators and barriers toward employment procurement. The personal factors ‘Age’, ‘Gender’, ‘Education’, ‘Character’, ‘Social background’, ‘Past and current experiences’, ‘Overall behaviour pattern’ and ‘Ethnicity/Race’ were also found to influence employment procurement.SummaryEnvironmental and personal factors influence employment procurement for individuals with NDD. Research should now focus on understanding the strength of these relationships and the importance and application of a biopsychosocial approach in research and service provision.