The link mentioned at the end of this video
is in the yellow block on the right at the TRN Web Site.
Category supported employment
Agency-Owned Social Enterprises: Is It Draining Resources for Employment of People with Disabilities?
Come down to our ice cream shop! Your patronage supports jobs for the people with disabilities who work here!
Hmmm. The idea of social enterprise is a wonderful concept. Having a business that incorporates diversity and funnels its profits into social causes, including supporting people with disabilities, has much potential. But here’s the problem. Agencies that are charged with getting people community employment are using the concept as a systems model to be replicated as a significant part of their solution to unemployment. This has turned into a bit of a sideshow.
Three years ago, I wrote a blog post that took a critical look at the growing trend in social enterprises as a solution by agencies for the unemployment of people with disabilities. I noted a number of major concerns with such approaches, and I used the term “engineered employment” to describe them.
After recently visiting a number of agencies that were in the process of converting their facility-based services to “community employment,” I have found nearly all of them have been struggling to enhance their job services. But what they are also spending a great deal of time, money, and resources doing is developing their agency-owned businesses – selling muffins, snacks, shredding, recycling, art studios, cafes, farms, ice cream shops, and so on. And then they tout these as community employment success stories. From my observations, it’s easy to see why agencies will prefer this path rather than direct job placement.
For example, “social enterprise” is an impressive cutting-edge term. It can be traced to European worker cooperatives in the early 90s that provided work for people with disabilities. It has a certain allure. Secondly, setting up a business can be an enjoyable and satisfying challenge, especially when you have a grant that will fund it. Third, it’s a nice thing to show off to families and visitors – there is a central location and it is easy to understand. Fourth, often the workers there are thrilled to be out of a workshop. And it can demonstrate the capacity of a worker with a disability in a community work setting.
But analyze this closer. What are the real outcomes and costs? And given the deplorable state of segregation and high unemployment of people with disabilities, is this where our focus should be?
While I think there is a place for social enterprise, I think there are real risks in human service agencies developing them. And here is why:
It is a formidable challenge to develop a quality job placement program. You need to do good hiring, quality training, develop career assessment practices, employer engagement strategies, and have effective job support strategies. From experience, I can tell you that this takes a lot of resources, work and a laser focus. But the payoff is huge. You can find well-matched jobs for high numbers of people with whatever job challenges they possess, once you have a flexible and competent system in place.
But if you are running a business, or worse, several businesses, where are your energies? They are diluted with maintaining and subsidizing one or several business models that are providing work that may or may not be of interest for a very small number of individuals. This is not to say that all micro-enterprises are to be avoided. Self-owned businesses are a reasonable job solution for the generally small numbers of individuals who have a passion for a particular business. But this must evolve from the individual, and not the agency thrusting it on the individual.
Non-profit human services, by necessity, must be lean and highly targeted to their mission. Service designs must add significant value and offer individualization to the people you serve, and not just add value to the reputation of the agency. Unfortunately, social enterprises rarely add enough direct value for the effort an employment services agency must put in. They also often require ongoing subsidies, using resources that should be going to job placement. And they offer “fixed job types” that are not grown from personal choice. Finally, the expertise of most human services management is not geared to business profitability, which social enterprises still require.
If you are running a business in your agency for the purpose of employing people with disabilities, consider these questions:
- Ask yourself if your enterprise can be quickly spun off and survive on its own?
- Ask if there are workers with a real passion for that work – not just those who were placed there and have come to be comfortable?
- Ask what the costs will be per the number of individuals served?
- Ask if this business is competing with other employers in the community – the very people you are seeking to act as a resource to?
- Are there really insolvable obstacles such that the employees of that business cannot be employed elsewhere in the community
- And if there are still good reasons to develop or maintain a social enterprise, are you willing to let the workers own the business, rather than the agency?
If one of your goals is to provide community employment, do not dilute your mission with an enterprise that will “engineer jobs” that haven’t grown out of personalized career assessment or discovery. Funders and policymakers need to stop funding these efforts with seed money that should go to job developers and employment consultants. Disability services have access to a relatively fixed pool of resources, folks. And 4 out of 5 people of working age with significant disabilities aren’t in community jobs. When you pull money away from your main mission, you better have some innovation in mind that will eventually produce job outcomes at least as good as customized job placement.
Right now, and I have looked closely at several, I cannot find any in social enterprise.
Sub-Minimum Wage Battle Heating Up
The continuing controversy regarding using sub-minimum wage for workers with disabilities (using special worker certificates under Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act) rages on. Use of this provision since 1938 has led to far too many examples of exploitation, artificially lowered wages, and poor employment outcomes. It needs to be phased out; review some of my previous postings on this issue.
Recent developments have cast new light on the issue and energized advocates trying to end the practice. Last February, 2014, President Obama issued an Executive Order that raises to $10.10 the hourly minimum wage paid for work performed by parties who contract with the Federal Government, including workers with disabilities. According to the Order, raising the pay of low-wage workers increases their morale and the productivity and quality of their work, lowers turnover and its accompanying costs, and reduces supervisory costs.
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| Photo credit: APSE |
Yet, at the same time, SourceAmerica, formerly known as NISH, as the agency responsible for distributing government contracts to non-profits, continues to routinely award such contracts to many non-profits that pay workers with disabilities less than minimum wage. Indeed, it has even lobbied against the phasing out of Section 14(c). This recently lead to a very public protest of SourceAmerica headquarters by a collaboration of national advocacy organizations, including APSE, the National Federation of the Blind, the National Council on Independent Living, ADAPT, Little People of America, and TASH.
Finally, bi-partisan support continues to grow for US House Bill H.R. 831, The Fair Wages for Workers with Disabilities Act. Now with 96 co-sponsors (as of August, 2014), the bill would end issuing any new special wage certificates by the Department of Labor. It also phases out existing certificates, giving for-profits one year until their certificate is revoked; public entities have two years; and private non-profit vocational providers using sub-minimum wage will have 3 years to transition to integrated job placements at commensurate wages. At that time, Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act will also be repealed.
Over 2700 existing certificates are being used across the US currently. Predictably the outcry from most in reaction to the pending legislation has been dire predictions of layoffs, closures, and the spectra of people having nowhere to go or nothing to do. And while this could actually happen, it could only occur if those providers elect to do nothing about modernizing their services over the phaseout. In fact, there are many other agencies that exist that serve the same individuals with the same kinds of support needs, and do so without using sub-minimum wage. A good deal of evidence supports the ending of this antiquated practice.
It’s time to make US wage policy consistent and inclusive of all people, including workers with disabilities.
Finally! A Civil Rights Breakthrough
The following is a guest post by my colleague Bob Lawhead.
– Dale
On April 8, 2014 the U.S. Department of Justice announced “a landmark settlement agreement between the United States and the state of Rhode Island, vindicating the civil rights of approximately 3,250 individuals across the state with intellectual or developmental disabilities (I/DD).” This case constitutes the nation’s first statewide settlement involving the unnecessary segregation of people with disabilities in segregated sheltered workshops and day facilities, in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It is well known that these conditions exist in every state of the union and in the District of Columbia.
Programs continue to segregate people, seemingly justifying the continuation of inaccessible publicly-funded recreation centers and programs. Sheltered workshops and segregated day activity centers continue to keep people in perpetual slavery without the benefit that comes from a real job for real pay. These examples are most certainly “separate” but have never been “equal” to the public educational, recreational and employment programs currently in existence for the “typical” population.
According to the New York Times (Editorial, April 11, 2014) “Americans with intellectual and developmental disabilities historically have been shuttled far from society’s mainstream into segregated lives and workplace serfdom, earning wages as low as pennies per hour for the most repetitive and menial jobs. The Supreme Court in 1999 pronounced this kind of treatment a civil rights violation under the Americans with Disabilities Act, but abuse and isolation from society have continued to this day. The need to end the economic servitude and social exile of people with disabilities has long been clear. The Providence agreement is a promising but overdue starting point.”
Change driven by a response to a Department of Justice civil rights complaint can cost a state much more than taking the initiative to develop an Employment First policy. Additionally, the individual states should want to avoid the burden of Rhode Island’s ten years of supervision by the Department of Justice. Public policy makers at the state level must move rapidly to proactively build integrated employment opportunities for their citizens with disabilities. According to the DOJ’s Ms. Samuels, “Unnecessary segregation of people with disabilities is harmful to people with disabilities and to our communities. We cannot wait another day to change. And we won’t.”
We must move forward to correct the injustice of state-sponsored segregation for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Professionals currently understand how to provide effective supports to people who desire employment. Research tells us that integrated employment options actually cost less than ongoing segregation during the day. Most importantly, people and their families are telling us in increasing numbers that they want to take their place in the regular workforce. It’s time, it’s right, let’s go for it!
Bob Lawhead serves as CEO of Community Link in Colorado. He is Public Policy Chair for the Colorado Association of People Supporting Employment First (CO-APSE) and Co-Chairs the National Association of People Supporting Employment First (APSE) Public Policy Committee. Bob also serves as the Colorado Project SEARCH Statewide Director, is a member of the TASH Employment Committee and is an advisor to Self-Advocates Becoming Empowered (SABE) of Boulder County.
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Overcoming the Multi-Tasking Bias of Employers in Hiring
In my previous post, commenters noted the benefits of my proposed supported employment process of Plan-Match-Support, but worried about a commonly reported hiring issue – the preference of employers to hire a person who can do multiple tasks. This perception can throw a roadblock into hiring a worker with a disability who might be considered capable of completing fewer kinds of tasks than others.
Let’s analyze the situation closely. First, it’s important to acknowledge that we have no research evidence on employer hiring preferences when workers with disabilities are in the equation. We have only studies of general employer attitudes toward hiring people with disabilities, and the anecdotal reports of job developers.
Unfortunately, this means that our understanding of employer thinking here is weak. It also means that if a job developer hears an employer say, “No thanks, I have a candidate who can perform more tasks,” we have no way of knowing how that actual job development process was performed to that point. Nor do we know how the job developer reacted. We also don’t know whether the employer has been educated about a specific job applicant with a disability, or whether the employer has had previous experience with workers with disabilities.
Why are these factors so important? Simply saying employers prefer multi-task-capable applicants oversimplifies the issue. Everyone would prefer Superman over Clark Kent in theory, unless you happen to just need a good reporter. For example, several research articles have found that employers who had previous positive experiences with workers with severe disabilities actually reported more favorable attitudes toward hiring individuals with severe disabilities in the workplace, despite any comparisons to multi-tasking candidates.
The comfort level with the job developer, and his or her credibility, also can influence decision-making. And most importantly, the employer personally meeting and assessing the skills of the job applicant with the disability can be crucial in overcoming bias, rather than considering a pitch about a “theoretical” applicant with a disability (thus increasing the probability of a discriminatory stereotype). And finally, the notion that workers with disabilities can’t expand their skill repertoire with training, accommodation, and support is wrong.
Further, the notion of multi-tasking actually can be detrimental to business performance. Recent studies of workers performing numerous tasks found that all performance suffers when trying to do too many things, not to mention increasing everyone’s stress level.
So, yes, the multi-task hiring preference can present job development issues, depending on the employers’ experiences (or lack of) and bias. But it can be mitigated by how the job development process occurs, and how well we educate employers about real productivity, the benefits of a diverse workforce, and the process of talent matching, a concept I will talk about in a future post.
The reality is that when workers with disabilities are well-matched to tasks that need completing, those tasks are completed reliably and productively. This is the most salient factor in hiring, whether those tasks represent all the business tasks or not. And there are many other non-task contributions workers with disabilities make to the workplace as well. How well we develop our employer engagement so that we overcome any multi-task hiring bias is key.
Moving Beyond “Place, then Train”
When supported employment first challenged the status quo of sheltered work over 25 years ago, the mantra was that it represented a shift in thinking. It was a movement away from Train and Place to its opposite, Place, then Train. That pithy quote helped to convey and crystallize the philosophical evolution taking place. Waiting to place someone until he or she is ready, based on training in a sheltered workshop, was just not working. For one thing, it took way too long for those few that managed to even get jobs. Researcher Tom Bellamy estimated that, based on average placement rates at the time, it would take over 55 years for someone to have a real job opportunity.
But in today’s world, Place, then Train has its own shortcomings. For too long, employment professionals have worked to find any available job opening, put job seekers in there, and then try to train for all expected tasks. This approach is not only over-simplified, it causes poor quality work outcomes. While getting any job was an improvement over a life of segregated work, it still too often missed the mark for good wages, social inclusion, longevity, and personal satisfaction.
So where should we go from Place, then Train? Something more like Plan, Match and Support. Still simplified, to be sure, but this is a more sophisticated take on job success. Jobs for people with employment challenges need to be customized to fit their skills, interests, and needs. And employers need workers who meet their task needs, fit in socially, and are motivated. Simply put, this requires individualization that includes all three components.
Plan has two elements. It refers to the preparation required for a good job match that focuses on the two key customers, job seekers and employers. Career Planning for a job seeker means vocational assessment, using situational and and natural environments, and developing such things as self-representation skills, job experiences, portfolios, visual resumes, and interview skills. Employer Planning begins with employer research, and involves various strategies of employer engagement, leading to networking, and then very specialized job development for customized tasks and settings.
Match and Support take the place of Placement and Training. Placement implies something we do to people, rather than assisting workers with disabilities to be hired successfully. Matching is a more facilitative approach. Like a good headhunter or dating service, you want to bring together people and workplaces where there is a good fit, then help make the magic happen by negotiating a Job Match. This includes job analysis, customization of tasks, and helping arrange accommodations and other needs. Once a job has been brokered, workplace Support and training strategies focuses on natural supports and building co-worker relationships to facilitate learning and assistance from within the work environment. This is quite different from traditional job coaching. Instead, it involves utilizing employment specialists to facilitate training, rather than being the sole source of instruction.
When presenting this approach, there are often a range of worries from staff, including the time required to do the planning. And yes, in the real world, shortcuts and priorities often must happen. But the level of planning accomplished relates to both the probability of success and level of quality. In a future blog post, I will discuss the ways to prioritize and build teamwork such that we don’t sacrifice quality and revert back to Place and Train, because that too often turns into Place and Pray, which is no way to ensure high rates of job success.
The Two Sides of the Employment First Coin
Like a two-sided coin, the advocacy movement of Employment First has two core linked components.
The first side is about ending obsolete practices – to phase out the needless segregation, less-than-minimum wages, and limited work tasks given to people with disabilities that make up much of sheltered work.
The second side is to provide a system that supports, for every individual with a disability, a preference for quality employment services that are individualized. These are services that lead to well-matched jobs to enhance productivity, social success, and wages in community integrated businesses.
The success of both goals are interdependent. Moving people with disabilities out of sheltered workshops does not achieve the goal of a quality life if, after leaving, they remain excluded from typical community life, and instead sit home doing nothing, or be relegated to day programs focusing on non-vocational activities, or fail in poorly-matched and weakly-supported jobs.
And this is what might happen if states close workshops without investing in supported employment services. If states just maintain their supported employment for the small percentage of people receiving those services (about 22% nationally in the US), this will only perpetuate a serious bottleneck to employment people with significant disabilities have faced for the last 30 years. New services must be expanded or incubated to be able to serve more people.
In addition, the level of quality of such services varies widely from place to place. Far too few agencies are well versed in marketing planning, job analysis and customization, or naturally sustainable job support strategies. A commitment to cutting edge service is a needed investment.
But, as well, ending a segregated approach with demonstrably poor outcomes must be part of the discussion of what needs to change. We cannot just ignore this half of the goal. Many of the large disability service agencies take the position that segregated facilities will just “fade away on their own” (to quote one such position paper) once better employment services are offered. But that is overly simplistic and has proven untrue over time. It will take proactive steps to end the current reliance on sheltered employment as a solution to work for people with disabilities.
If we consider both sides of Employment First, then we must acknowledge three basic conclusions.
- First, change won’t occur until we freeze referrals to sheltered workshops, as is finally now being done in several states. Then there must be an active process to downsize the census over time.
- Two, offering quality employment services to many more people requires a large investment in capacity-building. This includes not only core basic training for the new staff that must be hired, but also in-service development to greatly increase the quality of career planning, job development, and job support. Many agencies still only provide rudimentary levels of these skill sets.
- And, finally, if established agencies are to successful change their missions and services, they must have access to technical assistance on organizational restructuring. Agency conversion can be complex and fraught with land mines, from family resistance, management restructuring, and the changing of agency mission and staff organization. Agencies taking this leap must be offered support, guidance and the resources necessary for them to succeed.
Workshops: The Burden of Proof is On You
Over the last year, I’ve been in front of numerous audiences to discuss the concept of Employment First and the need to phase out facility-based sheltered workshops. I don’t make the argument lightly. It is a wholesale change of focus for many. It uproots individuals from their comfort zone. It is threatening to agencies and parents. It requires funding and core policy shifts.
Yet, I have no doubt it is the right thing to do. And not just because it seems right from a value point of view, which it does. The reasons are multiple, and added up they are compelling.
1. Research has unequivocally found that those who attend workshops, when matched to those who don’t, earn less, have more limited vocational experience, and ultimately take longer to find jobs and cost more to serve over time.
2. Those who experience community employment and sheltered work choose community employment as their preference.
3. Segregation of people with disabilities has proven to make them more open to neglect, abuse, and exploitation.
But regardless, I find that most of those who refuse to make changes to a sheltered work system simply aren’t listening. They don’t want to examine evidence, because they see no need to change what they are comfortable doing. The threat of change, and the likely corresponding difficulties that go with any change, are too troublesome.But the burden of proof should always rest on those who have put people in environments that deviate from the typical experiences of our communities. We really shouldn’t have to prove community is better. Before placing someone in a workshop (or institution, group home, day habilitation, etc.) that program should first show evidence their outcomes exceed what can be experienced by people with disabilities in a community setting with reasonable-costing support. It’s like prescribing medication. Do the gains outweigh the side effects? Before you take any drug that will have an impact on your health, you would want to know what all its effects will likely be.
The default setting should always be what is typically experienced by community members as it applies to the life of a person with a disability, with reasonable support as needed.
All disability support, programs and interventions are actually accommodations, from a wheelchair to supported employment to sheltered work. The level of deviation from typical life varies in scale with each, as do their outcomes. When a disability program deviates from typical experience, there must be a cost-benefit analysis. That is, weigh the benefits of the intervention against the costs, including price, difficulty, risk of stereotyping and discrimination, and the risk of reducing quality of life and life experience.
For example, clearly a wheelchair has great benefits in increased mobility and corresponding independence. Compare this to its costs, which is not only its price, but also includes risk of discrimination and false stereotypes of lower intelligence, productivity, and more that people in wheelchairs have wrongly experienced. Despite the risks, most people with mobility needs use a wheelchair and confront the related issues.
But for workshops, the evidence clearly points to community employment as a better cost-benefit result. Maybe in the past, sheltered work showed a better outcome for individuals who would otherwise sit at home and do nothing; but that isn’t, nor should be, the situation today. Sheltered work is not today’s answer to disability unemployment. Disability facilities, the burden of proof lies with you. And there is no evidence there.
Sheltered Work Phasing Out in Rhode Island; Will Your State Host the Next Olmstead Investigation?
This week, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) reached a landmark settlement based on the conclusion that the state of RI and the city of Providence failed to provide services to individuals with developmental disabilities in the most integrated setting, and were putting students in a school transition program at risk of unnecessary segregation in sheltered workshop and day program settings. Earlier this year, DOJ had investigated the state for violating the Olmstead decision of the Supreme Court through its day activity services system. They focused on Training Through Placement (TTP), a North Providence agency that had a sheltered workshop with transitioning students from the Birch Vocational Program and other schools.
Under the settlement, individuals in Birch and the TTP workshops will now receive supported employment and integrated day services sufficient to support 40 hours per week. It is expected people will work an average of 20 hours a week and receive competitive wages. According to the agreement, supported employment placements cannot be in sheltered workshops, group enclaves, mobile work crews, time-limited work experiences (internships), or other facility-based day programs.
The 29-page agreement is quite comprehensive, and follows on the heels of another DOJ intervention regarding sheltered workshops in Oregon (see The Good, Bad and Ugly). This now marks two separate states that within the last six months have been pushed, under the Olmstead decision, into finally taking action against their long-standing policies of primarily funding sheltered workshops for day services. Clearly, the issue of day service segregation is finally moving from “wait and see” to civil rights enforcement.
Let’s look at the Rhode Island situation further. TTP workers with disabilities made an average $1.57 per hour, with one person making as little as 14 cents per hour. The investigation also found that Birch students were generally denied diplomas. Most were paid between 50 cents and $2 per hour, or were not paid at all, regardless of productivity. DOJ noted that the Birch program had been in existence for 25 years, and was a “direct pipeline” for cheap labor for TTP, which had contracts with local companies. The jobs were mostly typical of sheltered workshops, assembling jewelry, bagging, labeling and collating.
Effective March 31, 2014, the State will no longer provide placement or funding for any sheltered workshop or segregated day activity services at TTP. Further, last March, Rhode Island embraced an Employment First policy. Under the new policy, new participants in the state system that provides employment and other daytime services to 3,600 people with developmental disabilities will no longer be placed in sheltered workshops. The sheltered workshops should be completely phased out within the next two to three years.
The next question that should come to mind, if you are running or funding a program in a state chock full of workshops, is “Am I next?” Readers of this blog can examine the case presented for moving away from sheltered employment in other posts here. I also have had this discussion with some of the US DOJ attorneys. It’s time to expand the Employment First movement so that we away from sub-minimum wage, segregation, and limited work options, based on an obsolete model that can leave people open to exploitation. People with disabilities deserve better in every state. Employment First should not just be rhetoric. Take a leadership role now; there is no reason to wait for a lawsuit…
The Good, Bad and Ugly: Trying to End Obsolete Sheltered Work in Oregon
The state of Oregon, like it or not, will have a spotlight shining on it as it plans the future of employment services for people with intellectual/developmental disabilities (ID/DD). Like most states, Oregon spends the large majority of its employment service dollars ($30 million a year) for individuals with disabilities to be in sheltered workshops. In 2012, advocates filed a class action lawsuit challenging Oregon’s failure to provide supported employment services.
Last month, in a startling move, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it had joined the lawsuit, stating, “We are seeking to represent the interests of Oregonians currently working in sheltered workshops and those who are at risk of being placed in sheltered workshops upon their graduation.”
The complaint gave many examples of how people are currently “working” in workshops, such as one where 150 people with disabilities hand sort trash and clean garbage bins, with some earning only 44 cents an hour. The complaint noted that these conditions have persisted for decades, despite repeated reports and plans calling for action for reform. Again, this type of work is not unique to Oregon, and can be found throughout the US.
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| State Data: The National Report on Employment Services and Outcomes, ICI, UMass Boston |
Also, nearly every state reports integrated employment as only a small part of their day services. A recent article from the Institute on Community Inclusion at UMass Boston concluded that less than one in five people nationally are provided supported employment services, and that “there has not been a meaningful change in the number of people with ID/DD in integrated employment since 2001.”
In response to the complaint and the weight of the DOJ joining, Oregon Governor Kitzhaber issued an Executive Order to stop funding work assessments in sheltered workshops in 2014, and to stop funding sheltered workshops for those coming out of school or not already in one.
The Good
Every service system serves more people each year, yet the percentage of people in the majority service, sheltered work, stays the same. In effect, the numbers of people entering segregated work grows larger than those entering integrated work. In other words, four times as many people enter sheltered work each year as integrated work, making the problem larger and more difficult with time.
The Oregon executive order effectively freezes new placements in sheltered workshops, ending their continued growth. In addition, by eliminating work assessments in workshops, the order acknowledges the work being done there has little to no validity for predicting vocational preference or competence for any individual.
The state also says it will establish and implement a policy that Employment Services shall be evidence-based and individualized. Over the next nine years, the state sets targets to provide job services to 2,000 individuals.
The Bad
The Order considers group employment of eight or less, including crews and enclaves (an antiquated definition of supported employment) to be “integrated employment settings.” Group employment models have serious issues, and are not considered best practices, nor are they individualized as the Order announces services should be. Treating group placements as successful vocational outcomes misses an important point.
The Ugly
Disability Rights Oregon (DRO) immediately noted the planning holes in the Order regarding the future of the workshops in the state. Although “a significant reduction over time of state support of sheltered work” is stated, DRO notes that it provides “no adequate or effective commitment to benchmarks, system outcomes, or re-allocating or re-distributing resources to provide individuals with disabilities access to employment services in integrated settings. In sum, the plan all but assures that the goals for delivering services to individuals in the community are advisory goals and not commitments.”
This means there is little realistic planning for the challenging process to transfer to real community jobs those workers already placed in segregated facilities earning sub-minimum wages. And, according to the benchmarks, probably only a third of those already placed there will have access to employment serves over the next decade. Systems change requires a stronger effort in moving people out of workshops, not just closing the door to get in. It’s like trying to end institutionalization by simply stopping intakes. That’s not really a process, it’s more just a waiting game, and gives up on the residents already there.
Although this Executive Order acknowledges the goal of increasing employment and decreasing segregated work, as the system continues to grow, in all likelihood, most workers still stuck in sheltered facilities will continue to have no other options during their lifetime.