Clothing For Disabled People

Writer hails supported employment as a success story for social care

Alistair, who has Down's syndrome, says he loves his job, which he secured thanks to the staff at not-for-profit company Pure Innovations, which supports Alistair and his partner to live independently. Previously, Alistair had secured work placements with Boots and McDonald's. His support worker shadowed him during the first weeks at Sainsbury's to help him adjust to his job.

Wilson, an award-winning novelist and the supported employment and social care manager at Bootstrap Enterprises, an agency commissioned to do work for Pure, says Alistair is a good example of "what we are doing well in supported employment."

This approach seems to be the one favoured by the government, which wants to move away from sheltered workshops for people with learning disabilities and instead focus on helping them get mainstream jobs. A recent report for the government by Liz Sayce, chief executive of disability charity Radar, recommended shifting funds from sheltered employment to support 100,000 disabled people a year into mainstream work.

"Disabled people are part of mainstream society and that means being part of the mainstream workplace," said Maria Miller, minister for disabled people.

Success story

Supported employment, Wilson says, is one of the success stories of social care in the last 20 years. "We are under pressure because of public finances but this deserves to be championed for its remarkable success. Alistair has an ordinary life and that is a triumph. Sometimes small things can make all the difference for a person with learning disabilities."

Wilson worked with a colleague many years ago who would routinely ask each new client to identify one everyday scene they would like to have as part of their future. Just imagine one small good thing, he'd say – it doesn't matter how small or silly it seems.

"He was after something that could serve as an emblem of what might lie ahead, something to hang on to as people struggled to achieve the change they wanted in their lives. One person, he said, visualised a freshly painted blue front door; someone else imagined newly washed clothes pegged out on a line, another described cut flowers in a vase standing on a table."

In Wilson's new novel, The Visiting Angel, the central character Patrick Shepherd uses this notion with the people he is working with and this is perhaps where fact and fiction are blended. The remainder of the novel is clearly in the realms of fiction.

Ruling requires state to begin integration of mentally disabled ...

Hundreds of institutionalized mentally disabled people must be released to community programs starting this year to meet a settlement that has been struck to end a federal court battle.

The accord is expected to cost the state as yet untold millions of dollars.

It stems from a federal judge’s ruling that the Department of Public Welfare was violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by not having a system to allow those people to get out of state-run intermediate care facilities.

“At this point, we don’t know what the exact cost might be,” DPW spokesman Mike Race said Thursday.

Estimates in the settlement state that at least 300 institutionalized clients statewide already have expressed interest in returning to the community.

At least 50 people are to be brought back into the community in 2011-12. That will rise to 75 in 2012-13 and to 100 each in 2013-14 and 2014-15. After that at least 75 people must be integrated annually.

Up front, the settlement will require the state to pay $432,500 to cover legal fees of the Disability Rights Network of Pennsylvania , which in 2009 filed a class-action lawsuit against the DPW on behalf of institutionalized people.

While it is being praised by advocates for the mentally disabled, the deal doesn’t come at a financially opportune time for state leaders.

They are working to close a projected $4 billion budget deficit for 2011-12 as the July 1 deadline looms for passage of the next state budget. Gov. Tom Corbett has proposed a $27.3 billion budget with widespread funding cuts, i ncluding a $471 million reduction for the DPW. So some advocates are watching to discourage the state from robbing Peter to pay Paul as it complies with the settlement in the federal case.

“On the one hand, I’m pleased that these people will be getting out of the institutions,” said Stephen Suroviec, executive director of the Harrisburg-based Arc of Pennsylvania .

The Arc doesn’t believe that anyone should be institutionalized but that community programs best serve the mentally disabled, he said.

“On the other hand,” Suroviec said, “the Corbett administration and the General Assembly need to adequately fund the community system so the people who do get out are served well.”

There is cause for pause in that regard, he said.

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