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Let’s honor Ally, Kim, Allison, and Gail’s choice to stay in their sheltered workshop
It’s now up to a legislative conference committee to decide whether Ally, Kim, Allison, Gail and many others will continue their longtime participation in sheltered workshops for the intellectually disabled in Massachusetts.
Ally is 24 years old and has Down Syndrome. She is non-verbal and suffers from anxiety, but excels at routine. Her tasks and assignments at a workshop in Newburyport provide her with a feeling of satisfaction and importance, and with a paycheck, which she endorses and cashes at a local bank. She then walks with her mother to a convenience store where she purchases items with her earnings.
Kim, 43, has worked in the same sheltered workshop for 23 years. She has tried a number of times to work at jobs in the community, but those attempts have all failed for a variety of emotional, social and physical reasons. However, by choice, she puts in a 30-hour workweek in the sheltered workshop. She lives in her own apartment with support from her parents and other family members, and from people in the community.
Allison is 44 and has been a client of the workshop for 22 years. During that time, she has grown in independence, but enjoys being with her peers in an organized, safe environment. She works a few hours a week at a McDonald’s, but returns to the workshop every day. She is very proud of earning two paychecks.
Gail is 44 and has Down Syndrome. “I like to get paid to do the work I like to do. I like to work with my friends,” she says of her participation in the workshop. She lives in an apartment managed by the YWCA in Newburyport, makes her own breakfast and lunch, and takes a bus to the workshop every day. Doing all of that requires 100 percent of her capability. Gail has had several part-time jobs in the community, all of which, for a variety of reasons, have ended. Her workshop job is the primary basis of her self-esteem.
However, the Patrick administration and state-funded, corporate providers believe they know better than these four women and their families what’s best for all of them, and are moving to close the Newburyport workshop and the rest of the sheltered workshops throughout the state.
As we have reported in several blog posts, the administration believes it would be better for Ally, Kim, Allison, Gail, and hundreds of other intellectually disabled persons throughout the state to work in mainstream jobs where they will not be “segregated” from non-disabled peers and will supposedly be able to earn higher wages. DDS announced that it was no longer allowing new referrals to sheltered workshops in the state as of this past January, and plans to close all remaining workshops as of June 2015.
But the families of workshop participants are fighting back, arguing that appropriate mainstream work opportunities do not exist for their loved ones, and that the sheltered workshops provide what they want and need. They maintain that when the workshops are gone, the former participants will end up stuck in DDS day programs with little to do and with no wages at all.
In late April, at the urging of families, workshop staff, and advocates, the House of Representatives inserted language in the proposed Fiscal Year 2015 budget to protect the workshops. The line-item language is intended to prevent the planned closures of sheltered workshops if existing participants choose to remain in them. The Senate, however, did not adopt the protective language. As a result, the issue is now set to be decided by a legislative, House-Senate conference committee on the budget.
The Department of Developmental Services and DDS’s corporate providers are apparently already moving to head off the possibility that the conference committee will adopt the protective language in the House version of the budget. We understand that late last week, Gary Blumenthal, president of the Massachusetts Association of Developmental Disabilities Providers (ADDP), held a meeting with administrators and staff and some parents in one sheltered workshop, and offered a vague promise to schedule another meeting with DDS to discuss keeping some of the workshops open on a limited basis.
Vague promises do not and should not take the place of clear and needed statutory language. We hope that the message gets communicated to the conference committee, which is set to begin deliberations on the budget on June 4, that such promises will not suffice. The protective language in the House budget should be adopted by the conference committee.
In coming weeks, we hope all six members of the conference committee will come to understand what participating in their sheltered workshops has meant for Ally, Kim, Allison, Gail and for so many others.
Arc, ADDP, DDS putting out misleading information about sheltered workshops
It seems the Department of Developmental Services and their corporate provider allies are spreading misleading and at times false information about sheltered workshops in their joint effort to close them throughout the state.
The battle over the workshops is now in the state Senate, which is considering budget amendments to prevent the administration from carrying out its plans to close all remaining workshops in the state by June 2015. As we have reported, the administration considers these popular programs politically incorrect because they allegedly group intellectually disabled people together to do assembly and other types of work, and thereby “segregate” them from their non-disabled peers.
In an email sent to members and advocates on Friday, Leo Sarkissian, executive director of the Arc of Massachusetts, maintained that sheltered workshops “do not allow for community inclusion.”
That’s just not true. As an administrator of one sheltered workshop explained, non-disabled persons work alongside disabled individuals in that DDS-funded facility, and several disabled clients are taken into the community regularly to make deliveries and for other purposes. “Our building …looks and feels like any other business in our community,” the administrator said.
Meanwhile, DDS and the Association of Developmental Disabilities Providers (ADDP) are misrepresenting the position of the federal government, particularly the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, regarding sheltered workshops. Contrary to what DDS and the ADDP are saying, the DOJ is not requiring states to close the workshops. That is what the ADDP contends, however, on its website and emails it is sending out.
In addition, a DDS PowerPoint used in “family forums” earlier this year stated that DOJ legal actions in Oregon and Rhode Island found that sheltered workshops “violate the ADA (Americans with Disabilities) Act and the Olmstead Supreme Court decision.” But that’s not true either. A DOJ letter sent in January to Rhode Island state officials makes it clear that while the Obama administration doesn’t like sheltered workshops, the Department does not consider that the workshops violate the law. The letter notes, for instance, that:
While sheltered workshops and facility-based day programs may be permissible placements for some individuals with I/DD (intellectual and developmental disabilities) who make an informed choice to rely on them, the State of Rhode Island has unnecessarily and unjustifiably over-relied on such programs to the exclusion of integrated alternatives like supported employment and integrated day services (our emphasis).
The DOJ letter goes on to state that sheltered workshops in Rhode Island do not have to close if people choose to remain in them. Yet, the Patrick administration is mischaracterizing the DOJ position as requiring it to close all remaining workshops in Massachusetts. The administration must be worried that there is a chance of passage of language in the Fiscal Year 2015 state budget that would ensure that sheltered workshops remain open for those who choose to stay in them.
The effort to close the workshops is being driven by an extreme anti-congregate care ideology that the Patrick administration subscribes to. Simply because a group of disabled people work together in sheltered workshops, the administration considers it to be a “segregated setting.”
If that’s the case, though, what does the administration think about the Gateway Arts program in Brookline, which provides art studio space and “professional development for more than 100 adults with disabilities who have talent in fine hand crafts and fine art?”
Even if it’s not technically a sheltered workshop, the Gateway Arts facility (as shown in the website photo below) would appear to be in violation of federal regulations, as far as the Patrick administration is concerned, because there are more than 100 disabled artists there. That would seem to make it even more of a congregate facility than a sheltered workshop with 20 or so disabled people and non-disabled people in it.
Please call your senator and ask him or her to support budget amendments 875 and 946, which state that DDS “shall not reduce the availability or decrease funding for sheltered workshops serving persons with disabilities who voluntarily seek or wish to retain such employment services.” Also, please ask them to support amendment 176, which would strike the words “closure of sheltered workshops” from a budget line item that funds the transition of people from sheltered workshops into provider-run day programs.
Sheltered workshop families win the first round in the House
Families fighting for the preservation of sheltered workshops for people with developmental disabilities have won the first battle in the House, which upheld language last week protecting sheltered workshops from closure in the state.
The House leadership rejected an amendment to the state’s Fiscal Year 2015 budget, which would have eliminated the protective language.
The battle now shifts to the Senate where we are urging the Senate Ways and Means Committee to insert the same protective language in DDS line item 5920-2025. The language states:
…the department (of Developmental Services, DDS) shall not reduce the availability or decrease funding for sheltered workshops serving persons with disabilities who voluntarily seek or wish to retain such employment services.
As we’ve noted, the Patrick administration has adopted the party line of the corporate providers and the Obama administration that these popular and vital skill-building programs somehow discriminate against their participants by keeping them out of the mainstream workforce. But in moving to close all sheltered workshops in Massachusetts as of June 2015, the Patrick administration is going even farther than the Obama administration, which is not requiring the closure of sheltered workshops whose participants wish to remain in them.
In a letter dated January 6, 2014, to the attorney general of Rhode Island, Jocelyn Samuels, acting assistant attorney general with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, wrote:
No one who is qualified for integrated supported employment and/or day services should remain in segregated sheltered workshops and facility-based day programs, unless, after being fully informed, he or she declines the opportunity to receive services in an integrated work or day setting with access to appropriate services and supports, including supported employment and integrated day services. (Our emphasis)
In other words, the protective language in the Massachusetts House budget is perfectly in line with the federal position on sheltered workshops. Even the federal government recognizes a family’s right to choose the appropriate type and level of care for their loved ones with developmental disabilities.
So why then are the Patrick administration and the Massachusetts Association of Developmental Disabilities Providers (ADDP) continuing to work to remove the House language and to shut down all remaining workshops in the state?
Please contact Senator Brewer, chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, and urge him to support the House language protecting the sheltered workshops. He can be contacted at: Phone: 617-722-1540; Fax: 617-722-1078; Email:Stephen.Brewer@ masenate.gov.
House leadership rejects politically correct view on sheltered workshops
In a welcome counter to some political-correctness-run-amuck in the Patrick administration, the leadership of the state House of Representatives is reportedly solidly behind efforts to preserve vital sheltered workshops in Massachusetts for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
As we reported last week, Rep. Brian Dempsey, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, placed language in the Fiscal Year 2015 budget that would block the Patrick administration’s plans to close all remaining workshops in the state by June 2015.
As a result, the Department of Developmental Services prevailed on a House member to file a budget amendment (No. 282), which would remove Dempsey’s protective language from the bill. Corporate providers to DDS, meanwhile, began blaming COFAR for having thrown a monkey wrench into their plan to transfer participants from the workshops to their own provider-run daycare programs.
But we understand that the plans in the House are to quietly quash Amendment 282 during the budget debate, which starts on April 28. The scene will next shift to the Senate, where we hope the Senate Ways and Means Committee will place similar protective language for the workshops in its version of the budget.
Workshop proponents have spent the past week calling members of the House to urge their support for Dempsey’s line item language, which states that DDS “shall not reduce the availability or decrease funding for sheltered workshops serving persons with disabilities who voluntarily seek or wish to retain such employment services.”
As we’ve noted, DDS and the providers maintain that the sheltered workshops “segregate” developmentally disabled people by placing them together in group settings. This allegedly prevents them from reaching their full potential because they are not being placed alongside non-disabled peers in mainstream work sites. Citing that reasoning, the administration blocked all new referrals to the workshops as of this past January, and announced plans to close all remaining workshops in the state as of June of 2015.
While the administration’s reach-their-potential argument may sound reasonable in theory, it has no relationship to the experience of real people such as Kim Ryan and Gail Wayne, both of whom have been participants in a sheltered workshop in Newburyport for the past 20 years. Kim’s parents, William and Janet, said that Kim has tried seven different times to work in mainstream, community-based jobs, but has experienced either “social or emotional failures with each of these attempts.”
Martha Smith, Gail Wayne’s mother, said Gail has also worked in many community-based jobs, such as sorting mail in the Newburyport City Hall and working in the municipal library; but each of those jobs disappeared over the years for different reasons. Gail currently does volunteer work in a gift shop in Topsfield, but it is in the sheltered workshop that she has been able to work on a permanent basis and to earn a paycheck. “Her first love is the workshop,” Martha Smith said. “She feels completely secure there and wants to be there. She wants it to continue.”
Martha’s husband, Reid Smith, maintains that there are few full-time jobs available in the mainstream workforce for developmentally disabled persons such as Gail and Kim. Reid Smith adds that the term “sheltered” may be a misnomer. “It’s a workplace with a little more supervision,” he says. “I always urge people who happen to oppose them t go and see them.”
As part of its argument for closing the workshops, the administration has cited federal lawsuits in Oregon and Rhode Island, which are based on the segregated workplace argument. However, as we’ve noted, those settlements did not require the closures of all sheltered workshops as the Patrick administration is planning in Massachusetts.
It’s still worth contacting your state representative and Rep. Dempsey’s office to voice your support for these workshops, and to thank Rep. Dempsey for his support. The House Ways and Means Committee number is (617) 722-2990, and Rep. Dempsey can be contacted at Brian.Dempsey@mahouse.gov. You can find your own legislators at: http://www.wheredoivotema.com.
Ways and Means budget language would protect sheltered workshops
The House Ways and Means Committee has been listening to proponents of sheltered workshops for people with developmental disabilities, and has placed language in the Fiscal Year 2015 budget that would block the Patrick administration’s plans to close all remaining workshops in the state by June 2015.
As a result, corporate providers to The Department of Developmental Services are blaming COFAR for having thrown a monkey wrench into their plan to transfer participants from the workshops to their own provider-run daycare programs.
In an email sent to its members on Thursday, the Massachusetts Association of Developmental Disabilities Providers (ADDP) maintained that COFAR is “the only organized group that has objected” to the plan to close the workshops, and described COFAR as having “a small membership,” and as having been “formed to protest the closure of state institutions.” It’s always a sign that the leadership at the ADDP is getting flustered over an issue when they single out COFAR and inaccurately portray our mission.
In fact, COFAR has joined with a coalition of sheltered workshop proponents and providers in an effort to keep these popular programs operating in the state. It’s an uphill battle. Backed by the ADDP and the Arc of Massachusetts, the administration has already prohibited all new referrals to the workshops as of this past January as part of an “Employment First” initiative.
[UPDATE: As of Friday afternoon, several House members had signed on as co-sponsors to an amendment (Amendment No. 282) to the budget to remove the protective language for the sheltered workshops. We fail to understand how anyone could support the removal of these excellent programs with paying jobs for intellectually disabled people. Please ask your legislator and Rep. Dempsey to reject Amendment 282.]
As we’ve noted, the administration, the federal government, and their friends in the corporate provider industry argue that sheltered workshops are politically incorrect because they allegedly “segregate” disabled people from non-disabled peers by placing them in congregate-care settings instead of in mainstream employment, and they often pay below-minimum wages. But many families of the participants maintain that the programs provide them with useful skills and meaningful activities, and that there is nothing about them that segregates or isolates people.
Moreover, the workshop proponents argue, the administration’s contention that mainstream employment opportunities exist for all or even a significant number of developmentally disabled persons is largely wishful thinking. It’s hard for anyone to get a job these days. If sheltered workshops employing hundreds of developmentally disabled persons throughout the state are closed, most of those participants will end up in DDS daycare programs, many of which offer few skill-based activities, much less any sort of wages for performing them.
Nationally, an online petition to save sheltered workshops around the country garnered more than 3,000 signatures.
In its version of the FY ’15 budget released this week, the Massachusetts House Ways and Means Committee inserted language into Department of Developmental Services Line item (5920-2025), stating that DDS “shall not reduce the availability or decrease funding for sheltered workshops serving persons with disabilities who voluntarily seek or wish to retain such employment services.”
The language, however, appears to be contradicted by Outside Section 102, which the Ways and Means Committee also placed in its budget plan, which requires the DDS to submit a report to legislative committees each year “until the full implementation of the employment first initiative.” The section also refers to “the transition from sheltered workshops to programs under the employment first initiative.” Nevertheless, the ADDP email this week voiced concern that the House Ways and Means line item language would “prevent the expected June 2015 closure of sheltered workshops,”and stated that the ADDP, the Arc, and DDS “will seek to have this language withdrawn.”
Among the reasons given by the ADDP for closing the workshops in Massachusetts was the possibility of a federal lawsuit against the state by the “litigious prone” U.S. Department of Justice and the federal Disability Law Center of Massachusetts. We would note, though, that while the DOJ has taken legal action in Rhode Island and Oregon alleging that sheltered workshops segregate participants in those states, even the DOJ hasn’t called for closing all of those shelters down. In a January 2014 letter to the Rhode Island attorney general, the DOJ Civil Rights Division left room for maintaining sheltered workshops for those participants who chose to stay in them (see the final paragraph before the conclusion on page 32.)
No such choice will be available for Massachusetts residents if the Patrick administration, the Arc, and the ADDP are allowed to carry out their plan to close down all sheltered workshops in this state.
To contact the House Ways and Means Committee, call (617) 722-2990. The chair of the Committee is Representative Brian Dempsey, who can be contacted at Brian.Dempsey@mahouse.gov. You can find your own legislators at: http://www.wheredoivotema.com.
Questions surround phase-out of sheltered workshops for the developmentally disabled
The Patrick administration’s decision to close group worksites known as sheltered workshops for persons with developmental disabilities as of June 2015 is causing anxiety to many families and confusion apparently even to many service providers.
As we previously reported, these programs, which provide assembly and other jobs in group settings, are considered politically incorrect by the state and federal governments because they allegedly “segregate” disabled from non-disabled people and pay some of them below minimum wages. But as we’ve noted, many family members of workshop participants maintain that sheltered workshop programs provide their loved ones with important skills and meaningful activities; and they say they are not prevented from regular interaction with non-disabled people.
The Patrick administration, however, is moving ahead quickly with the shutdown of sheltered workshops. Backed by the Arc of Massachusetts and the Association of Developmental Disabilities Providers, Governor Patrick has proposed an additional $5.6 million in the coming fiscal year under the Department of Developmental Services Day and Work program line item (5920-2025) in the state budget, to transfer people from sheltered workshops to DDS day programs. The Arc and ADDP are asking for an additional $5.5 million on top of that.
Families of sheltered workshop participants are being told by DDS, the Arc, and the ADDP that their loved ones will remain in community day programs while DDS provides them with job coaching and other employable skills, and looks for opportunities to place them in the mainstream workforce. The current sheltered workshop programs, they say, will be replaced by “supported” or “integrated employment” programs in which developmentally disabled people will work alongside non-disabled people in actual businesses and will earn at least the minimum wage.
But there is uncertainty over how many mainstream or “integrated” jobs really exist for most people with developmental disabilities. And while DDS maintains that current sheltered workshop providers will stay in operation, we and others have many questions for which answers are hard to come by:
- Will the additional funding being sought by the governor, the Arc, and the ADDP be used to provide meaningful work activities and skills to disabled persons after their sheltered workshop programs have been closed? Or will the transfers of workshop participants to day programs simply result in the warehousing of people who were previously engaged in paid work?
- Will providers that switch from sheltered workshops to supported employment programs have to dismiss a certain number of developmentally disabled participants from paying jobs and replace them with non-disabled individuals so that the new programs would then be fully “integrated,” i.e., not have too many disabled people or too few non-disabled people working in them?
- What is the acceptable number of disabled people in one setting before it is considered a segregated workplace?
- What is the minimum required number of non-disabled persons in a given workplace, which employs disabled people?
There seems to be little clear guidance on these issues from DDS or the federal government, which is phasing out sheltered workshops on a national scale. Thus far, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is not putting too much specificity into its rules and regulations on the matter. In an informational bulletin issued in 2011, the CMS stated that supported employment programs “must be provided in a manner that promotes integration into the workplace and interaction between participants and people without disabilities in those workplaces.”
But what does integration into the workplace really mean? What constitutes interaction between participants and people without disabilities? How many people without disabilities must be present in order to satisfy the CMS and DDS?
Similar questions surround the CMS’s requirement that supported employment programs pay disabled individuals “competitive wages,” which is defined by the CMS informational bulletin as “at or above the minimum wage, but not less than the customary wage and level of benefits paid by the employer for the same or similar work performed by individuals without disabilities.”
Is it fair to require that a disabled individual who lives in a state-supported residential setting be paid the same as a non-disabled person who must pay rent or a mortgage? Related to this is what impact will receiving a minimum or prevailing wage have on a disabled person’s Social Security benefits?
Many of these questions came up at a forum held earlier this week by DDS in Easthampton on its sheltered workshop phase-out plan. Among those attending was Ed Orzechowski, president of the Advocacy Network, an organization affiliated with COFAR. Orzechowski noted that the forum was well attended by family members, who expressed concern and anxiety about what will happen to the workshops in which their loved ones have participated for many years.
While admitting that the promised effort to place current workshop participants in “integrated” jobs “will not be easy,” DDS representatives insisted to the families in Easthampton that the state has little choice but to move ahead with the workshop closures. They cited federal lawsuits, filed by the Department of Justice in recent years against the states of Rhode Island and Oregon, alleging that sheltered workshops in those states were segregated settings.
Fear of a federal lawsuit may be behind the Patrick administration’s desire to move as quickly as possible to shut sheltered workshops in Massachusetts. But it’s also the case that the Patrick administration has long subscribed to the Obama administration’s untenable position that all congregate forms of care for the disabled are discriminatory. The effect of this position has been to privatize a growing list of state services to the disabled and thereby put ever more money in the pockets of the CEOs of corporate providers represented by the Arc and the ADDP.
We fear that the effort to shut down sheltered workshops is really largely about more money for corporate providers of day programs. It is also about forcing people into a theoretical model of care, which, as usual, denies them and their families any say in that model. As one commenter to a previous post of ours said, the CMS and DDS-supported workshop model is akin to forcing her to spend her days with either a group of astrophysicists or teen skateboarders even though she happens to have nothing in common with those two groups.
We hope that at the very least, DDS will agree to keep sheltered workshops open in the state as long as it takes to place all of the current participants in them in promised jobs in the mainstream workforce. DDS has an obligation to provide continuity of service to these individuals and their families. Their lives should not be placed in upheaval based on a plan fraught with so many unanswered questions.
A disappointing update on sheltered workshops in Massachusetts
In a post the other day, I suggested that state Department of Developmental Services Commissioner Elin Howe talk to family members of sheltered workshop participants, who maintain the programs have provided their loved ones with valuable social and skill-building activities.
But no such luck.
In an email notice send out yesterday, Howe announced that no new DDS clients will be referred to sheltered workshops in Massachusetts after January 1. As we feared, this is the beginning of the end of this valuable program in the state.
Sheltered workshops provide opportunities for developmentally disabled people to do assembly work and other tasks in group settings, usually for small amounts of pay. But for Commissioner Howe and other opponents of sheltered workshops, these programs are politically incorrect. Sheltered workshops, they argue, “segregate” disabled people from their non-disabled peers, apparently in just the same way schools and businesses in the South segregated blacks in the days before the Civil Rights movement.
Howe said sheltered workshop providers have been instructed to develop plans to “transition their workshop services to more integrated employment options,” meaning the plan is to place all workshop participants in the mainstream workforce.
Let’s leave aside the question whether it is really valid or fair to compare intellectually disabled people, whose guardians voluntarily place them in programs that provide them with work activities, to blacks who were forced until the 1960’s in this country to drink at separate water fountains and go to separate schools from whites.
For now, I would simply argue that we’re skeptical that closing programs that provide work activities for people with developmental services will somehow increase their overall employment opportunities.
I wonder if Commissioner Howe has thoroughly reviewed a 2011 report by the University of Massachusetts Boston on trends in employment prospects for people with developmental disabilities.
While the UMass report does appear to be biased against sheltered workshops, it notes that there has been relatively little movement so far toward mainstream employment of people with intellectual disabilities from sheltered workshops around the country. The report cites as reasons for this lack of movement, “staff resistance, family resistance, and funding structures that do not adequately support community-based services for people with high support needs.”
In other words, families like and want their loved ones to stay in sheltered workshops; and it takes money to place people with Intellectual and developmental disabilities into mainstream jobs with the types of supervision and support they need. And we’ve seen, that money isn’t there. All of this seems to raise questions about the wisdom of DDS’s decision to stop all new referrals to sheltered workshops.
In fact, one of the outcomes of closing sheltered workshops, which appears to be highlighted in the UMass report, is that many, if not most, of the people who are participating in sheltered workshops will end up being transferred to what are called “non-work” settings if those workshops are closed. Non-work settings, also known as day programs for people with developmental disabilities, may or may not provide them with meaningful work activities to do.
The UMass report noted that in 2010, there were 3,700 people with Intellectual disabilities in sheltered workshops in Massachusetts and about 3,500 people in “integrated employment.” However, there were about 9,500 people in “non-work” settings. The report stated that: “State, county, and local IDD (intellectual and developmental disabilities) dollars are increasingly being spent on CBNW (Community-based Non-Work) services and not integrated employment.”
So, our concern is that when all sheltered workshop programs are ultimately closed in Massachusetts, most of the former participants will end up in day programs where they do nothing and get no pay at all. And even if many of these people are placed in so-called integrated employment, the outcomes may not all be good. Howe certainly didn’t consult the Buonomo’s about their son’s disappointing experience working at Walmart, for instance.
Given all that, it was amusing to read in her email that Howe remains “strongly committed to working with all of our stakeholders” in ultimately closing all remaining sheltered workshops in the state. I don’t recall her asking for our opinion on it or acknowledging the opinions of most family members of sheltered workshop participants.
Sheltered workshops under fire in Massachusetts
Paul Buonomo enjoys his job stuffing envelopes, collating papers and carrying out other tasks in a program in Danvers known as a sheltered workshop.
His parents, Doris and Joe Buonomo, maintain that the workshop, run by Heritage Industries, is the best such program Paul has ever been in.
But in the wake of a national debate over the political correctness of sheltered workshop programs for people with developmental disabilities, programs such as Paul’s may soon be phased out. Here in Massachusetts, the Department of Developmental Services is reviewing its policies regarding sheltered workshops and has invited state-funded providers into a working group to determine what the future will be for the programs.
Sheltered workshops provide opportunities for developmentally disabled people to do assembly work and other tasks, usually for a small amount of pay, in group settings. The charge of political incorrectness stems from the fact that the workers are not participating in the nation’s mainstream workforce and are therefore allegedly being “segregated” from non-disabled people. In many – perhaps in most – cases they also receive sub-minimum wages.
The charge that sheltered workshops promote segregation and inadequate pay to disabled people is being leveled not only by a number of advocacy groups, but by government agencies, including the federal Department of Justice and the National Council on Disability.
These are the same advocates and agencies, by the way, that have long opposed all forms of congregate care for the developmentally disabled.
But supporters of sheltered workshops, many of whom are family members of the workshop participants, argue that these programs provide their loved ones with fulfilling work and skill-building activities, and that if the programs were eliminated, there would often be nothing to take their place.
The Buonomos, for example, don’t believe their son, who is 60 and has moderate intellectual disability, is at all segregated or placed at a disadvantage because he isn’t receiving a competitive wage in a mainstream workforce setting. Heritage Industries provides Paul with a check every two weeks that varies from $2 to $10, depending on the amount of work Paul does, according to Joe Buonomo. It’s not much money, Joe says, but Paul lives in a state-operated group home and doesn’t personally have to deal with financial pressures that would necessitate a job paying a competitive wage.
Gail Orzechowski, whose sister, Carol Chunglo, 73, participates in a sheltered workshop in Orange operated by Interface Precision Benchworks, maintains that the program has “opened up her (Carol’s) world. I don’t know how they can say she’s segregated,” she adds.
The Arc of Massachusetts has stated that the impetus in Massachusetts to reconsider its sheltered workshop policies stems from litigation in Rhode Island and Oregon, which has involved the Justice Department.
In the Rhode Island case, a service provider was accused of improperly “segregating” developmentally disabled persons in a sheltered workshop and paying them sub-minimum wages. Under a settlement of the case, clients in sheltered workshops will be switched to supervised mainstream employment, which implies the end of sheltered workshops in that state.
Following the June settlement in Rhode Island, a Department of Justice official maintained that from that point on, every developmentally disabled client in the state’s sheltered workshops would receive “real jobs with real wages,” and would no longer be subject to “the tyranny of segregation.”
It’s not quite clear to us, though, how providing real jobs at real wages to all disabled people will actually happen. Like the Buonomos and Gail Orzechowski, we also don’t buy the charge of segregation when it comes sheltered workshops, in particular. Doris Buonomo says she hopes DDS will listen to outside voices, particularly those of parents like her and her husband Joe, who believe the workshops have made a positive difference in their loved ones’ lives. Thurs far, we have heard only that DDS has invited the Massachusetts Association of Developmental Disabilities Providers and the Massachusetts Arc to participate in the working group that is reviewing the Department’s sheltered workshop policies. Both of those organizations have taken positions against the workshops (here and here).
Meanwhile, family members and other supporters of sheltered workshops around the country are fighting the tide of closures of sheltered workshop programs. They contend the Justice Department and other opponents of the workshops are fighting an ideological war, but are offering no viable alternatives.
In New Jersey, the state Legislature stepped in this summer to prevent a plan by the state to close the state’s sheltered workshops. The New Jersey plan to defund the workshops met with opposition from advocates and from program participants and their families around the state, according to The Burlington County Times.
An online petition filed by Missouri AID, an advocacy organization for the intellectually disabled, states that sheltered workshops “are the only places where some individuals can work and function as productive members of the community.” The petition, which garnered 3,092 signatures, adds that:
There are countless horror stories about individuals who have tried supported (mainstream) employment, and they fell in with the wrong group of individuals, were taken advantage of, sent to prison, or ended up walking the streets alone. Sheltered workshops throughout the U. S. provide a safe environment for adults with (intellectual and developmental disabilities) to work, interact with their peers, and gain a sense of accomplishment…
The Missouri AID petition adds that “We should be creating more employment opportunities for people with disabilities – not eliminating options.”
While the idea that people with developmental disabilities should work alongside non-disabled peers and earn competitive wages is good in theory, it doesn’t always work in practice, Doris Bunomo notes. In Paul’s case, for instance, a job at Walmart ended badly for Paul even though he had gotten good performance evaluations there for a job stocking shelves, and had even earned a promotion.
Doris said Paul had been working at Walmart for a year, but an incident occurred one day in which he got “upset,” leading to a situation in which he was lectured by the manager and threatened with being fired. Doris said a support staff person for Paul did not follow an agreed-upon protocol between the residence and Walmart, and Paul did not work there again. Doris maintains that many people with developmental disabilities can work in professional or business settings with careful supervision, but that is not always possible.
“I think he’s very pleased where he is,” Joe Buonomo says of his son, adding that while Paul primarily interacts with other developmentally disabled people in his sheltered workshop, there are many opportunities in his life to meet people who are not disabled.
”I don’t think he (Paul) feels restricted in any way,” Joe maintains. In addition to the many community-based functions that Paul attends via his group home, he often helps Doris deliver books and other items to their local library and church. Also, given Paul’s lifelong love of trains, his parents have also often taken him to the freight train terminal in South Portland, Maine, where he has “made a ton of friends with the workmen” over the years, Joe says.
Orzechowski says the workshop that employs her sister Carol has helped teach her how to function socially. “Her eating habits and her other social habits have improved, and she’s developed friendships since she’s been in the program,” Orzechowski says of her sister, who she describes as having a severe level of intellectual disability. Carol, she says, also has many opportunities to interact with people in the community, including vacations that she has taken with money earned from her workshop program.
It’s far from clear what may happen in Massachusetts regarding sheltered workshops. We certainly hope that whatever is done, DDS will first consult with the families involved such as the Buonomos and Gail Orzechowski. If DDS does listen to those people, the Department will find a way to keep these valuable sheltered workshop programs running.
COFAR blog 