by Charles H. Crawford
It appears to some that the federal Rehabilitation Act has fallen on hard times. The Rehab. Act, which once stood alone as a noble effort to make the lives of people with disabilities as whole as possible, now resides inside the Workforce Investment Act. And a guiding belief in the value of the whole person once associated with rehabilitation seems to have been superseded by the primary motivation of doing whatever gets people jobs, any jobs as long as they can be called “integrated,” and abandoning just about everything else.
On one side are those who say that all those old-fashioned ideas about providing a person with assistance aimed at getting their baseline lives and skills together before narrowing services down to employment-related issues are too expensive and don’t really have an impact on the bottom line purpose of vocational rehabilitation (which is to produce tax-paying employed individuals). They point to the many folks who may have been highly educated and received various services that improved the quality of their lives, but remain unemployed or under-employed. In short, say these rehab reformers, these clients of the system were denied the essential social service — a job!
The other side argues that getting a job is very important, but we must also pay attention to the equally important goal of making sure these folks get enough independent living or social services and training so that they will be able to take full advantage of later employment-related services. These supporters of the whole-person approach believe the current rehabilitation establishment is essentially cheating people out of important services that would make them more employable and better able to participate fully, not only at work, but in their communities as well.
Is it all as simple as drawing lines between the two positions: i.e., rehab exists to improve the “lot” of people who are blind versus rehab exists to get people jobs, jobs, jobs? Moreover, are we allowing too many blind people to be overlooked by rehab simply because they are not seeking classic employment?
We don’t need to answer these questions today, but as an organization of the blind, we will need to begin the dialogue which will lead to our advocacy for the reauthorization of the next rehabilitation law. There are many ways to view the topic that range from sending vouchers to everyone, supporting the current system, redefining the nature of rehabilitation, or any number of other considerations.
No matter what we decide, there are plenty of discussions ahead and resolutions to be written. It’s not too early to start thinking about these issues, since it might be too late if we allow others to start thinking about them for us.