(Cross-posted from The COFAR Blog)
In a post the other day, I suggested that state Department of Developmental Services Commissioner Elin Howe talk to family members of sheltered workshop participants, who maintain the programs have provided their loved ones with valuable social and skill-building activities.
But no such luck.
In an email notice send out yesterday, Howe announced that no new DDS clients will be referred to sheltered workshops in Massachusetts after January 1. As we feared, this is the beginning of the end of this valuable program in the state.
Sheltered workshops provide opportunities for developmentally disabled people to do assembly work and other tasks in group settings, usually for small amounts of pay. But for Commissioner Howe and other opponents of sheltered workshops, these programs are politically incorrect. Sheltered workshops, they argue, “segregate” disabled people from their non-disabled peers, apparently in just the same way schools and businesses in the South segregated blacks in the days before the Civil Rights movement.
Howe said sheltered workshop providers have been instructed to develop plans to “transition their workshop services to more integrated employment options,” meaning the plan is to place all workshop participants in the mainstream workforce.
Let’s leave aside the question whether it is really valid or fair to compare intellectually disabled people, whose guardians voluntarily place them in programs that provide them with work activities, to blacks who were forced until the 1960’s in this country to drink at separate water fountains and go to separate schools from whites.
For now, I would simply argue that we’re skeptical that closing programs that provide work activities for people with developmental services will somehow increase their overall employment opportunities.
I wonder if Commissioner Howe has thoroughly reviewed a 2011 report by the University of Massachusetts Boston on trends in employment prospects for people with developmental disabilities.
While the UMass report does appear to be biased against sheltered workshops, it notes that there has been relatively little movement so far toward mainstream employment of people with intellectual disabilities from sheltered workshops around the country. The report cites as reasons for this lack of movement, “staff resistance, family resistance, and funding structures that do not adequately support community-based services for people with high support needs.”
In other words, families like and want their loved ones to stay in sheltered workshops; and it takes money to place people with Intellectual and developmental disabilities into mainstream jobs with the types of supervision and support they need. And we’ve seen, that money isn’t there. All of this seems to raise questions about the wisdom of DDS’s decision to stop all new referrals to sheltered workshops.
In fact, one of the outcomes of closing sheltered workshops, which appears to be highlighted in the UMass report, is that many, if not most, of the people who are participating in sheltered workshops will end up being transferred to what are called “non-work” settings if those workshops are closed. Non-work settings, also known as day programs for people with developmental disabilities, may or may not provide them with meaningful work activities to do.
The UMass report noted that in 2010, there were 3,700 people with Intellectual disabilities in sheltered workshops in Massachusetts and about 3,500 people in “integrated employment.” However, there were about 9,500 people in “non-work” settings. The report stated that: “State, county, and local IDD (intellectual and developmental disabilities) dollars are increasingly being spent on CBNW (Community-based Non-Work) services and not integrated employment.”
So, our concern is that when all sheltered workshop programs are ultimately closed in Massachusetts, most of the former participants will end up in day programs where they do nothing and get no pay at all. And even if many of these people are placed in so-called integrated employment, the outcomes may not all be good. Howe certainly didn’t consult the Buonomo’s about their son’s disappointing experience working at Walmart, for instance.
Given all that, it was amusing to read in her email that Howe remains “strongly committed to working with all of our stakeholders” in ultimately closing all remaining sheltered workshops in the state. I don’t recall her asking for our opinion on it or acknowledging the opinions of most family members of sheltered workshop participants.
if they cared what COFAR or the families of these individuals thought. They might even ask an opinion if they cared about the people these workshops serve. Clearly they don’t care about either.
To be honest, I can’t figure out what the hell they care about because it certainly can’t be the people that the taxpayers pay them to care about or they would fighting to keep these programs going.
What is next? DDS has closed 3 of six ICFs–one is well on the way to closing and forced most of those residents into this supposed “Xanadu” called the community. If I had to guess I would say its more than likely the people requiring ICF level care, are the same people who need these sheltered workshops. So not only have they lost their life long homes for the sake of someone’s vision of ideological perfection, they are now about to lose their opportunity for paid work. The alternative, day programs. Sitting around doing nothing. What else will be taken away from these people in the name of ideology or political correctness?
What the hell are these people smoking anyway?
Like it or not, and it is an unfortunate reality, that not every person with a development disability can work in the mainstream workforce–its just a fact. The ideal situation would be sheltered workshop for those who need them and mainstream work for those with that ability. WHY IS NO ONE ADVOCATING FOR BOTH?