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Real Jobs Are Rare When Bolt Sorting Is The Norm
By, Tom Lowry Morning Call Allentown, PA Oct 2, 1989Series: THE MENTALLY RETARDED - STILL EXILES IN SOCIETY
This is the final installment in a five-part series that examines the widespread problems plaguing agencies in Pennsylvania that care for the mentally retarded.
On the morning of July 28, Shellie Funk walked through the doors of Friendly's Restaurant in Trexlertown and into the real world.
The 21-year-old mentally retarded woman was starting her first job, a paramount event considering she had always been secluded at home with her family in Lower Macungie Township or in segregated training programs in school.
But now she was going to be a dishwasher. People would be counting on her.
Earning $5 an hour, Funk is an exception in a system where thousands of retarded people spend their days in training programs tearing up paper then sweeping it up, screwing gasket parts together, or packaging cassette tapes. Some people in those programs can earn $90 a week.
In one sheltered workshop, a man spent 48 years learning how to wash dishes. He never made it into the working world like Funk.
"I can train my dog to wash dishes in 48 years," said Thomas Neuville, director of the Commonwealth Institute in Harrisburg, which studies issues affecting the disabled. "What we are wasting here is people's lives."
Funk has had ups and downs in her two months at Friendly's but for the most part the boss has been pleased. Joe Roberts, her manager, said she was able to adapt with no problems after the huge dishwashing machine went on the fritz recently.
Just like anybody else, Funk jokes with her fellow workers and talks with regular customers such as Larry Seachrist, who comes by for coffee in the afternoons.
When asked if she enjoys her job, Funk nods, knocking her thick glasses down on her nose. "It's better than school," she said.
Funk is lucky. She is among the small number of mentally retarded people in Pennsylvania with a coach who helps her on the job.
Advocates for the retarded say job coaching, also known as "supported employment," is probably the best way to integrate the disabled into the mainstream. Other attempts to integrate, such as community living in group homes, have come up short, critics say.
Yet some officials, especially those running workshops, say supported employment is just one way to create fulfilling lives for the retarded. They say some retarded people will never be able to hold a regular job.
But advocates say despite some retarded people's lack of skills, allowing them to work with non-handicapped people breaks down ugly stereotypes. Supported employment moves the retarded closer to the type of integration envisioned when deinstitutionalization began 20 years ago, advocates say.
"It's important for people with retardation to dispel myths," said Chris Carabello, executive director of Employment Technology Inc. of Warminster, which provides supported employment training.
"(The retarded) are not all slinking around the corner like Tony Perkins (star of the movie "Psycho"). They can be just as productive as anybody."
A retarded woman trained by ETI worked as a receptionist at a corporate 7- Eleven office in Willow Grove. "When people got off the elevator, she was the first person they saw," Carabello said.
Another group of retarded people work for $15 an hour assembling computer cables for Hewlett-Packard Co. in Massachusetts, said David Ferleger, a Philadelphia lawyer who represented parents in the battle to close the notorious Pennhurst center. A judge ordered the Chester County state institution closed in 1977.
"The models we've created in the community care system underestimate the capability of the clients," he said.
Some retarded people will never be able to work in society, said John Lapidakis, president of the Lehigh Association of Rehabilitation Centers, a Bethlehem-based provider of services. Part of LARC's operation includes the Kurtz Training Center, where 200 people are trained daily and do subcontracting work for such companies as Capitol Records of Bethlehem and Victaulic Co. of America of Easton.
"(Supported employment) ain't the messiah," said Lapidakis.
"Not everybody can be placed," he said, noting that he places about 30 workshop clients each year in jobs outside Kurtz. "The realities are some people will need the different levels of programming."
But the state feels there are still too many people in workshops who should have real jobs instead. There are 10 times as many people in "sheltered" employment than in programs such as the one that placed Shellie Funk, said Art Geisler, a program and policy specialist with the state Office of Mental Retardation.
"All our expansion eggs are going to (supported employment) programs," said Geisler. "There is no new money to expand sheltered workshops."
About $120 million was spent this year in community-based services, including sheltered programs. Geisler estimates "several" million was spent on supported employment.
No one knows how many mentally retarded are employed in the state but it is certain they are outnumbered by the 16,000 participating in workshops, Geisler said.
"This is supposed to be realistic goals for job training? No way," said Karen Peischl of Allentown, whose severely retarded son, Jeffrey, bags and then unbags spoons at SPARC, an adult day-care program in Allentown. "There has to be something more challenging."
The system was designed so that people enrolled in workshops would progress to more intensive, difficult training and then to real work. For example, a retarded person enrolled in an adult day-care program would move to a sheltered workshop - where they might be taught to make a bed - to vocational training - where they might learn to separate nuts and bolts - and then to employment.
"It's a system good in ideals," said Carabello, "but one that hasn't resulted in people being in the least restrictive, most independent settings."
Geisler said there is virtually no movement of retarded people to more advanced programs. "The expectations are infinitely different in workshops than in the real working world," he said. "In a sheltered environment, you lose sight that you are a person." * * *
In a typical day at SPARC, more than 50 retarded people gather at the Godfrey Street location. Among their tasks are tearing paper and then sweeping it up, folding towels, making beds on tables and moving clothes pins from one basket to another.
Other parts of the day are spent in "downtime," periods of idleness when some clients fall asleep.
In fact, of the 5 1/2 hours people spend at the center, only four involve actual activities, according to a review of the SPARC program by the Commonwealth Institute.
The review pointed out weaknesses and offered recommendations. It was requested by Linda Mathias, director of the Association of Retarded Citizens of Lehigh and Northampton Counties, which oversees SPARC.
Perhaps the strongest and most important recommendation is: "Get people jobs and/or meaningful activity in the community."
In its six-year history, SPARC has not graduated a person into a job in the community, the review says.
The review also says:
- SPARC creates a segregated environment, with 56 disabled people spending much of the day together in one building.
- SPARC should strive for greater integration, which could be achieved by taking clients to the grocery store, the movies or even Musikfest.
"When I am out in public with a few clients they don't even seem retarded, they are like me, but back at SPARC they act retarded and are problems," a SPARC staff person told the institute in its review.
A lot of the training is performed in unrealistic settings, the review says. Beds are made on mattresses set on tables; real beds aren't used. Work is simulated without clients being paid. A lot of the work is actually undone by staff, the review says.
Mathias, who became director of the local ARC chapter in February, said she requested the review in part because she was aware of the SPARC program's shortcomings.
"There definitely needs to be more integration," said Mathias. She and her staff are working on setting new goals for the program.
Placing people in jobs has been difficult, Mathias said, because the programs are "so plugged up." Because SPARC clients have the lowest level of skills, they "have nowhere to move," she said.
LARC's Lapidakis said a "global brush" is used too often to paint sheltered programs. "We're saying nobody should be in programs (like Kurtz Training Center) but be out working in jobs," he said. "Not everybody is going to be that independent."
And telling parents their children will be that independent gives "false hopes," said Arthur Mack, a coordinator of professional services at LARC. Some clients in LARC will be there until retirement age, he said.
Mack feels that supported employment often throws retarded people into the workplace without assessing their needs. Some people will only be able to put stockings in packages or stack cassette tapes for the rest of their lives, he said.
Salaries for this subcontract work is paid at piece rate with earnings from $10 to $90 a week, Lapidakis said.
Last week, the retarded at Kurtz assembled lock washers and bolts to be used by power companies in South Carolina to restore electricity to areas ravaged by Hurricane Hugo.
Kurtz also has placed its fair share of the retarded in the community, Mack said. Pennsylvania Power and Light Co., Muhlenberg Hospital Center and Burger King are among the employers hiring from Kurtz's special custodial, warehousing and food service training program.
Kurtz checks in with employers regularly for about six months to see how placememts are doing.
Lapidakis doesn't see supported employment overshadowing programs like Kurtz. "They are full of prunes if they say Kurtz will be obsolete. Some are only going to learn to a certain point." * * *
Tammy Geiger, the cook at Friendly's on Route 222, looks over at Shellie Funk putting a tub of clean silverware under the counter. "She's like everybody else. She's so sweet," Geiger said.
"She surprised us. We didn't think she was going to do this well," said manager Joe Roberts. "Everybody was pretty up for her (coming to work there)."
Shellie's mother, Janice, thinks the supported employment program is "fantastic . . . Shellie had a rough time in the beginning but she enjoys going in now. It's given her a sense of self- importance."
A big smile spreads across Shellie's face as she pushes her Friendly's visor back on her head. Shellie said she has learned to walk to work from her family's house on nearby Lower Macungie Road - a level of independence she has never known. "I like it. It's all right," she said.
But that success is the result of a state-funded program run by the Private Industry Council of the Lehigh Valley that provided her with a coach, Henry Ssemanda.
Ssemanda goes to work every day with Funk and teaches her how to operate the machine to wash dishes. He's become her cheerleader.
When she makes mistakes, he tells her what she has done wrong and works with her until it's right. Ssemanda will start showing up every other day and then once a week and eventually disappear as Funk becomes more accustomed to her 25-hour workweek.
"She's knows about 60 percent of the job now but she's been brought up to a higher level," said Ssemanda. "In the beginning it was like she wanted to go home every minute."
PIC is one of 17 sites across the state given state grant money to run supported-employment programs for severely disabled people - from the blind to those with cerebral palsy. About $6.7 million has been spent since 1986, money from a variety of state agencies that is channeled through the state Office of Vocational Rehabilitation.
As of July, the program had placed 596 people with disabilities in three years. They've earned about $1.6 million in wages. Because the people are working and aren't eligible for some government benefits, taxpayers have saved about $1.9 million through the placements, said Vance Coover, a rehabilitation specialist with the OVR.
"This program is not about saying to businesses, 'Oh please hire our poor and disabled,' " Coover said. "It's about doing it on a business level by saying to companies, 'Our people are going to help you make money.' "
About 1,700 people throughout the state are waiting for placements.
PIC, which places people in Lehigh and Northampton counties, has a waiting list of 80.
But until there are more job coaches, that list won't be reduced, said PIC program manager Nancy Johnson, noting that her six job coaches have all they can handle.
"There's just not enough staff for the demand," said Johnson of the program, which has placed more than 25 people in jobs at such places as Pizza Hut, McDonald's and even Dun & Bradstreet.
Administrators hope future placements are for jobs with a higher level of responsibility.
"It's much easier for us to teach people to wipe tables in a hamburger joint than to be an electrician," he said. "But we want to try for more involved training."
Johnson said PIC hopes more of the area's large employers, such as Pennsylvania Power & Light Co., Air Products and Chemicals Inc. and The Morning Call, will hire through the program. Companies are eligible for federal tax breaks for hiring the handicapped. An employer can get as much as 40 percent back on $6,000 paid out in wages.
"It's a neat time to be in this field," said Rita Bath, job development specialist with a small supported employment program at the Good Shepherd Home. "A lot more employers are approaching us. But more still need to know about it." Good Shepherd has placed three people in jobs at Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and Best Products.
The Marriott Corp. has started using its own in-house job coach in a pilot project in Montgomery County, Md. Six thousand of Marriott's 230,000 employees are disabled, said Laura Davis, a Marriott spokeswoman.
"It's those larger companies that have the flexibility and luxury to create the situation where people with disabilities can work," said Carabello of ETI. "Instead of passing a jar around for charities at these companies, they can do more by forming a partnership with human services."
Advocates are convinced that once employers hire retarded people and sees their worth, they'll want to hire more. They hope more companies hire their own job coaches.
"Sometimes people with no experience in dealing with the handicapped become the most interested," said Carabello. "A lot of co-workers become more effective advocates than the paid advocates.
"People learn that persons with mental retardation and mental illness can be productive human beings, can communicate and don't have be just baby-sat," he added.
But achieving greater understanding is difficult, especially when more communities are enacting zoning ordinances to prevent group homes in certain neighborhoods. Advocates say the measures are blatant discrimination - illegal under the federal Fair Housing Act.
Such discrimination makes Mark Friedman sick. He is the coordinator of Speaking for Ourselves, a 550-member group of mentally retarded people in southeastern Pennsylvania.
Friedman sees the potential of the retarded every day. Many of the Speaking for Ourselves members work at jobs while running the daily operation of the group - from putting out fliers to serving on the board of directors.
In fact, Friedman is hesitant to be interviewed, referring questions directly to his members. He hopes this will enlighten society.
"The barriers are coming down but it's like Chairman Mao's long march. It feels like we're on the third step," said Friedman.
Debbie Robinson, incoming president of Speaking For Ourselves, said she worked several years ago in an office but was dismissed after several months because her employer wanted someone with more skills.
Robinson said she lost all her confidence after that and has just now begun to look for another job.
"I can teach people a lot of things they don't know," she said. "We have a lot of stories and a lot of ideas. We just don't get the chance to express them."
© Copyright Morning Call Oct 2, 1989
By Dr. Thomas J. Neuville
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