Barriers and Issues for Employment
a report prepared by Maine’s Work Group for Community-Based Living
The employment record for individuals with disabilities remains dismal. Perhaps the strongest statement on the poor progress of individuals with disabilities in regard to employment comes from a national survey. The National Organization on Disability/Lou Harris conducts a periodic “Survey of Americans with Disabilities,” a significant nationwide survey of 1,000 Americans with disabilities aged 16 and older. The most recent one, conducted in 1998, found that “Americans with disabilities continue to lag well behind other Americans in many of the most basic aspects of life,” particularly employment. Unfortunately, the 1998 findings are very similar to previous Harris studies from 1994 and 1986, representing little if any progress despite major changes in national disability policies, most notably the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990.
According to the Harris Survey:
“The summary of the state of employment for individuals with disabilities is quite depressing: employment, education, income, frequency of socializing and other basic measures of ten major 'indicator' areas of life. Furthermore, most of these gaps show little evidence of narrowing. In some cases, the gaps have even widened. Employment continues to be the area with the widest gulf between those who are disabled and those who are not.
Only three in ten working-age adults with disabilities are employed full or part-time, compared to eight in ten non-disabled adults. Working age adults with disabilities are no more likely to be employed today than they were a decade ago, even though almost three out of four who are not working say that they would prefer to be working. This low rate of employment has, in turn, led to an income gap that has not narrowed at all since 1986, with one in three disabled adults, compared to just one in eight non-disabled Americans, living in very low income households with less than $15,000 in annual income. And, while adults with disabilities continue to make progress in higher education - they are now just as likely to have completed at least some college as other adults - they continue to lag behind in getting a basic education, with one in five failing to complete high school, compared to only one in ten non-disabled adults.” (Emphasis added.) (footnote 1)
Maine statistics are less easy to come by, but two Maine surveys conducted in 1997 show very similar findings to the national data. According to Disability Income Systems (footnote2):
Kilbreth et al. (footnote 3) found:
This section provides a brief overview of some of the issues and problems with employment for individuals with disabilities, including:
Eligibility Criteria
Categorical eligibility criteria for employment services have produced
unequal treatment across the disabled and non-disabled, and across types of
disabilities. In many cases specific eligibility criteria segregate disability
services from the employment supports provided to a wider population of adults
that do not have disability diagnosis or labels. In addition, eligibility criteria
often separate different disability groups, often with undesirable results.
For example, funding for extended employment supports for persons with mental
retardation comes from BDS (Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services),
while funding for the persons with a brain injury is under a separate fund administered
by BRS (Bureau of Rehabilitation Services). The inequitable results can include
waiting lists or even no services for individuals in one disability category,
while others get adequate service and may even have more funding resources than
needed.
Waiting Lists
From time to time, overwhelming demand and limited resources may force
state agencies to institute waiting lists for certain services. The way agencies
administer waiting lists vary according to State and federal requirements. In
most cases, agencies are required to provide information and referral services
to people who are waiting for services. To determine how best to obtain services
as soon as possible, people placed on waiting lists are usually advised to contact
the agencies.
Integration in the Workplace
Prior to the 1980s, most agencies and programs provided employment
services for people with disabilities using “sheltered workshops,”
which are non-competitive, segregated settings. Despite efforts to move away
from sheltered workshops, these types of programs still exist.
While some sheltered workshop programs still operate, there are many success stories in Maine involving the conversion of provider services from sheltered workshops to community employment programs. The details and elements of one provider success story, Katahdin Friends Inc. (KFI), were documented in a report by Syracuse University. (footnote 4)
Since the 1980s, beginning with some key amendments (in 1986 as PL 99-506 and also in 1992) to the federal Rehabilitation Act 1973, there has been a shift toward the concept of supported employment. First applied to people with developmental disabilities and later expanded to people with serious mental illness, supported employment emphasizes the “place and train” model, in which workers are placed into integrated settings right away, before any training is started. This is in stark contrast to the past where training took place in sheltered workshops, often leading to problems when individuals attempted to adapt to a competitive work setting after having picked up many bad habits in the sheltered workshops. A number of models of supported employment have been tried with somewhat varying results, most share common programmatic roots developed in reaction to traditional vocational training and sheltered employment. The move toward supported employment has led to the development of many models for providing ongoing multidisciplinary on-the-job supports though job coaches.
The proper role and definition of integration has been a troubling issue for vocational services. Supported employment approaches helped to institute new integration initiatives, but many of the earlier ones were either adaptations of, or more extreme counter-reactions to, the earlier overuse of sheltered workshops. One early adaptation was the so-called industry-based “enclaves, in which groups or teams of workers with disabilities would work together, but in a regular business or industrial environment. Some service providers went to the opposite extreme of allowing no more than a certain ratio of workers with disabilities to those with no disabilities, and/or to define and monitor the extent of interaction between these two groups of workers. One problem with these approaches was the removal or limiting of worker choice as to where, and with whom, s/he would like to work.
Transportation and Housing
It is difficult for individuals with a disability to pursue employment
if they live in a rural area with no public transportation, and do not have
a car or cannot drive. Nor can someone be successful in work if they do not
have satisfactory housing for themselves and their families. The State’s
ability to maximize employment options depends to a very great extent on
the State’s ability to provide the housing and transportation programs
and services that will support the availability and choice between those
options. For more details, see the Affordable,
Appropriate, Integrated Hosuing and Transportation
Issues and Problems reports.
Labor Shortages
This country experienced record low unemployment rates since the middle
of the 1990s. Overall, such labor shortages are often seen as beneficial, as
employers make efforts to recruit from all sources, including workers with disabilities,
and take steps to more effectively retain the workers that they have.
Such labor shortages also can stymie efforts of persons with disabilities, particularly those with more severe disabilities, to seek independent employment. Such labor shortages affect the availability and quality of direct care workers who provide important employment support services, including personal care attendant, job development, job coaching, and related support services. Often the problem is that a strong economy pulls workers away from the direct care field, since direct care jobs are often shown, in comparison to private sector jobs, to have:
School-based Support Services and Early Work Experiences
In the past, middle and secondary schools were focused primarily on
in-school academic subjects, and were slow in providing community-based employment
services for students with disabilities. Reasons cited for this include:
There are extensive research findings (footnote 6) showing, for example, that youth with disabilities have many fewer after-school and weekend work positions than similar youth with no disabilities, and speculation that this differential might have long-range impact. Some of this is no doubt due to youth with disabilities facing the same type of challenges, and even discrimination, faced by adults in the job market.
Public school systems, with the help of Maine Department of Education and the statewide Committee on Transition system, have greatly increased the type and range of employment orientation and support services for students with disabilities. Many of these successful efforts started with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1990 that required specific transition planning, including connection to later work and additional schooling, starting when a student is aged 14. Maine’s Committee on Transition has helped to foster a team approach to helping youth with disabilities plan transition services, involving teachers, guidance personnel, adult service agencies, parents, advocates, and most importantly students, including peer mentors who have negotiated the transition process themselves. Other recent school/agency partnerships in the area of “school-to-work” and even cooperative education has helped to build a better understanding that work-based education is very appropriate for all students, in many cases particularly so for students with disabilities.
Work Disincentives
Many unemployed individuals with disabilities must rely on a complex
array of support services for their very livelihood. These critical supports
might be financial (SSI, Temporary Aid for Needy Families (TANF), targeted subsidies
(Food Stamps, Section 8 Housing support), health insurance (Medicaid or Medicare),
or other. Most of these programs are triggered to become less, or to stop altogether,
when earnings increase such as from employment. Some of these aid programs,
such as Food Stamps and housing assistance, trigger off with only a slight increase
in earnings. Some, such as the SSI cash program, have gradual dollar for dollar
reductions so that at least a person with a disability who goes to work won't
reduce their income level. But then there are others which have been set up
to be quite punitive in nature, causing major and abrupt losses in support,
often compounded by significant difficulties in re-establishing the support
if the person loses their job and thus no longer has the former level of earned
income.
Many of these disincentives to employment have been identified, and most have been modified or are being modified in a way that reduces or eliminates the punitive nature of the support reduction. Nonetheless, most of these disincentives have been around for so long that individuals with disabilities are very careful not to jeopardize their much needed supports. Many will not consider going to work, or even preparing to go to work, for fear of losing their supports. Many are quite distrustful of new incentives or opportunities in systems that have caused them so many problems before. Much consumer outreach, education and support is needed to help individuals with disabilities take advantage of new incentive policies, as well as to continue to identify and modify those disincentives and related punitive policies which continue to act as a significant barrier to pursuing competitive employment.
Conviction Barriers
Another long-lasting barrier to employment is the consequence of felony
convictions and related experiences in the justice system. Some people who are
in recovery from substance abuse acquired felony convictions while they were
in addiction, often for drug offenses or repeat OUI (operating a vehicle under
the influence) convictions. Although a person who is in recovery may behave
very differently from the way they had behaved while in addiction, the felony
record can be a big obstacle to gaining meaningful employment. Also, being unemployed
and unemployable can lead to a higher risk of relapse. Some advocates would
like to see this issue addressed, seeing if there is some possible measure to
encourage employers to take into account the nature of a person's felony conviction
and the efforts that have been made in post-conviction recovery.
Continued Discrimination in the Private Sector
It is quite discouraging to find that, despite the ADA being the law
of the land since 1990, little progress has been made in regard to employment
of persons with disabilities. The sad result is that the law has not appeared
to change discriminatory attitudes, or behavior, of employers and managers in
the American workforce.
One particularly striking finding comes from a study conducted by Cornell University in 2000, coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act's signing. That survey found that:
Another similar Cornell study showed that the economic boom in the 1990s did not benefit the employability of Americans with a disability, in fact their situation may have become just a little worse. The study found that in 1999, 10.8 percent of Americans of working age reported that a disability was partially or completely limiting their ability to work, down from 11.3 percent in the mid-1990s and essentially unchanged from the 1992 level of 10.7 percent. (footnote 8)
While these findings might be indeed discouraging, advocates for employment services for people with disabilities should apply current tools and opportunities toward these problems. Systemic change is indeed difficult and takes time, but at least many individuals will benefit as new efforts move toward real and lasting change.
Many advocates lay a good share of the blame for this lack of progress at the feet of the national Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) program. These programs, it is alleged, have been oriented too much toward short-term interventions, and they often focused on providing services to individuals with less severe disabilities. One report summed the failure as the following:
“First, state vocational rehabilitation services are time limited and predicated on the idea that once people obtain employment, they no longer require services and supports from the vocational rehabilitation system. This idea is entirely contrary to the realities of severe brain disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (manic-depressive illness)….,
Second, since its inception, state vocational rehabilitation agencies have perpetuated a system that rewards counselors for putting their greatest efforts and resources into those individuals who are easiest to place into employment and most likely to retain employment after placement.” (footnote 9)
This perspective, for a wide range of disability groups, provided a lot of support for passage of the Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act (TWWIIA) legislation, which now give consumers a "ticket to independence" voucher so that they can choose a rehabilitation provider that meets their real long-term support needs. With the "ticket," they can avoid the state VR system altogether if they choose, and can also receive supports and services for as long as five years to help them continue working.
The National Vocational Rehabilitation Program
Many advocates lay a good share of the blame for the lack of progress
for improving employment for persons with disabilities at the feet of the national
Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) program. These programs, it is alleged, have
been oriented too much toward short-term interventions, and they often focused
on providing services to individuals with less severe disabilities. One report
summed the failure as the following:
“First, state vocational rehabilitation services are time limited and predicated on the idea that once people obtain employment, they no longer require services and supports from the vocational rehabilitation system. This idea is entirely contrary to the realities of severe brain disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (manic-depressive illness)….,
Second, since its inception, state vocational rehabilitation agencies have perpetuated a system that rewards counselors for putting their greatest efforts and resources into those individuals who are easiest to place into employment and most likely to retain employment after placement.” (footnote 10)
This perspective, for a wide range of disability groups, provided a lot of support for passage of the TWWIIA legislation, which now give consumers a "ticket to independence" voucher so that they can choose a rehabilitation provider that meets their real long-term support needs. With the "ticket," they can avoid the state VR system altogether if they choose, and can also receive supports and services for as long as five years to help them continue working.
Recommendations
Footnotes: