(Cross-posted from The COFAR Blog)
As the Legislature takes up Governor Baker’s budget for the coming fiscal year, it looks as though the battle over sheltered workshops for the developmentally disabled in Massachusetts is set to begin once again.
Supporters of these vital programs won a reprieve last year when the Legislature inserted protective language for the workshops in the current-year budget. The language prohibits the Department of Developmental Services from closing or cutting off funding for sheltered workshops as long as there are people who seek them or wish to remain in them.
The budget language temporarily thwarted the efforts of then Governor Patrick to close all remaining sheltered workshops in the state as of this coming June. But the protective language has been removed from Governor Baker’s proposed budget for fiscal 2016.
It appears that despite the fact that we have a new governor, it is the same DDS with the same administrators running it; and they will never back away from their ideological opposition to any program that serves more than a handful of disabled individuals in one location.
Sheltered workshops provide settings in which developmentally disabled people can do assembly jobs and other types of work. In the view of the now Baker administration, such settings of care “segregate” developmentally disabled people from their non-disabled peers, and supposedly prevent them from reaching their potential in the mainstream workforce.
Many families and guardians of workshop participants, however, want these programs to continue and depend on them to provide valuable skills and meaningful activities to the participants.
Last spring, after a lobbying campaign by advocates of the workshops, language was inserted into the current-year budget, stating that DDS “shall not reduce the availability or decrease funding for sheltered workshops serving persons with disabilities who voluntarily seek or wish to retain such employment services.” The protective language survived a House-Senate conference committee in June, largely due to the support of House Ways and Means Chair Brian Dempsey.
But Governor Baker’s budget has not only removed that language protecting the workshops, the budget proposes a $4 million increase in a separate DDS account to move people from sheltered workshops into DDS day programs, many of which do not provide work-related activities.
We support the continued operation of sheltered workshops for reasons given in an email sent to Dempsey last May by Richard Urban, who is a guardian of his brother Tom. In December 2013, DDS closed Tom’s sheltered workshop where he had been employed for most of his adult life. Richard noted that Tom’s “work ethic and paycheck (from his sheltered workshop program) were two constants that allowed him a place on a playing field of equality with his peers, family and friends.”
Since his “forced exit from his workshop,” Richard said, Tom “has grown distant, is very confused, and expresses continued sadness over his job loss. His identity, and work community, have been lost, through no fault of his own but by virtue of a policy shift for which I am at a complete loss to understand.”
We’re at a loss to understand it as well.
There are many who are more comfortable and better served by such places. The end result is lack of meaningful work for people who want to VOLUNTARILY participate.
We just need to lobby again, and try to stamp out the robotic Procrustean bed of DDS. (Procrustes – ya can look it up)
I have to say since choosing this dilemma for my ethics project and delving deeper and deeper into research while contrasting it with my personal experience, my eyes have been wide open. I started out in the field as a direct supporter working for a supported employment program and respite care provider in a South Shore based non-profit. I started school at the same time in a Human Services degree program and still felt that Integrated/ Competitive employment was the gold standard for supports and that Sheltered Workshops were an obsolete model. I even wrote papers purporting as much and believed with all my heart in what I was supporting. Thanks to the COFAR Blog and Blue Mass Group I have found the voices supporting and advocating for these programs to stay open and have changed my position on this issue. It is staggering when you try to research claims to support this position as the ” powers that be” have way more public support and money. All things considered, I have all the material I need to present this project to a group of Honors students and college staff and I believe I can sway them to look at this issue from a wider perspective and not just the “sexy” and “safe” guise of DDS, ADDP, and our state’s administration. While I still believe that these agencies do good work that I will stand behind as an advocate, employee, and supporter I am at the same time disappointed in them and fearful that their overall mission is compromised by money. Something has got to even out. The individuals who are the largest stakeholders need to be accounted for with a lot more humanistic detail, and not just treated like statistics. Keep up the good work, everybody and I’ll do the same on my end. Also, thank you for all your testimonials as they help me to present my case in a compelling fashion.