Disabled workers face phase-out

Vocational programs yield to mainstreaming

RALEIGH -- At his East Raleigh assembly plant, a good day for Walter Weeks is one in which none of his employees has a seizure, there are no toilet accidents, and some of the workers stay on task.

If he gets a job out the door on time, so much the better.

"Everyone here has goals that we are working on," Weeks said of the 200 or so people with moderate to severe disabilities who report to Wake Enterprises every day. "Most of [the goals] have nothing to do with production."

Since the 1960s, when they were called "sheltered workshops," operations such as Wake Enterprises have given disabled adults a safe place to go on weekdays where they learn a job and social skills. In recent years, about 120 programs across the state have served 9,000 to 10,000 clients a year.

But as the process of de-institutionalizing evolves, North Carolina is following a national trend away from workshops to a new model, called "supported employment," in which disabled people are placed in mainstream jobs. They get training and follow-up reviews. In Mecklenburg County, all the workshops -- known as adult day vocational programs -- closed July 1.

No such deadline has been set elsewhere in the state, but agencies that run similar programs have been closing or reducing production. Clients once spent up to six hours a day in the shops, learning the concepts of reliability, timeliness and teamwork while making picture frames or assembling Christmas displays. With supported employment, they can work part time in a mainstream industry and spend the rest of their hours in social, leisure or educational pursuits, with or without other disabled people.

The legislature included $4 million in the new budget to pay for the follow-up required to make sure clients are adjusting.

"What we want to do is all about giving people choices and options about their lives and what they do with their time. It's empowering people," said Lisa Jackson, program manager for the division that oversees day vocational programs at the Department of Health and Human Services.

'Not for everybody'

That is fine for clients who can clean tables at McDonald's or bag groceries at Lowe's, but Weeks worries that eliminating the vocational shops too fast would leave those with the most severe disabilities stranded in a world that isn't ready to accept them.

"All of it is very good in theory," said Weeks, who supports the long-term goal of integrating disabled people into the mainstream. "When it works, it works great. But it doesn't work for everybody."

Bridget Murphy is chief operations officer for NEViNS Inc., a Charlotte agency that closed its vocational program in March, ahead of the July 1 deadline, but actually began placing clients in mainstream jobs at least six years ago. Initially, she said, the families of many NEViNS clients resisted the concept. They worried that their loved ones wouldn't fit in outside or, worse, would be at risk of getting hurt or being taken advantage of.

"I think change is difficult for anybody, and especially for families with disabilities," Murphy said. "Usually, it's parents and everyone around the person with the disability who thinks they can't succeed in the workplace because of behaviors they have. But you get them out in the community, and it's a completely different person. The expectations are different.

"And they have bloomed."

At first, Murphy said, most of the jobs employers offered her clients were janitorial. Now they include fast food and some retail work. Murphy and others expect a wider variety of jobs to open up as society learns more about mental retardation, autism and other developmental disabilities.