Quality and Equality in Employment Services for Adults with Severe Disabilities

Abstract

This paper responds to Brown et al. (1984), who propose an extended training program involving work without pay in integrated settings for adults with severe intellectual handicaps. While agreeing about the capability of persons with disabilities, the importance of integration, and the failings of typical services, we believe that their extended training proposal represents an unnecessary retreat from values that have guided development of exemplary school and community services for persons with severe handicaps. As an extended outcome of services, the proposed program needlessly sacrifices wages and other employment benefits, distorts the benefits of integration by looking only at the workplace, and tolerates unequal treatment of citizens with severe handicaps. Relying on unpaid work as a strategy for time-limited employment preparation creates the risk of overuse and of perpetual readiness programming, suggesting that professional effort could be better spent in development of supported employment opportunities. Current federally supported employment initiatives provide a framework for combining wages and integration and offer support for local program development.