A Survey of Community Sheltered Facilities: Implications for Mandated School Programs.

A survey examined admission barriers, client and disability variables, program content, and levels of school/agency cooperation in adult, activity, work activity, and sheltered workshops in a midwestern state which has a representative urban-surburban-rural profile. Reported characteristics were based upon the returns of more than half of the state's 110 facilities. Procedures In the past three to five years a number of veys conducted by Greenleigh (1975) and studies, both federal (Department of Labor, the Department of Labor (1977. 1979) have 1977, 1979) and private (Greenleigh, 1975) examined contract procurement proce have examined sheltered workshops and dures, placement rates, job satisfaction, have found them to be deficient in terms of client earnings and benefits, and agency ac client remuneration, work complexity, and creditation. While such survey information client placement. Most recently, the Wall may be useful to a number of rehabilitation Street Journal (October 17, 1979) has carried publics, it provides little practical informa an article examining sheltered facilities and tion to schools interested in designing cur has found them to be deficient in terms of ricula that will prepare hard-to-train youth client compensation, agency management, to survive the requirements of postschool and rehabilitation philosophy (Kwitny & sheltered environments. Landauer, 1979). Admission requirements, client compen sation performance, and operational policies of postschool sheltered employment services During the workday, the vocational and so are critically important to the educational cial needs of individuals thought to be in community because many, if not most, gradcapable of competitive employment are fre uates of school programs for severely imquently met by adult activity, work activity, paired youth will require sheltered employor sheltered workshops. Clients served in ment services following graduation. In fact, adult and work activity settings are consid it could be argued that the special education ered capable of only "inconsequential" pro community, in particular, has a high need to ductivity, while sheltered workshop employ know about local sheltered employment opees equal the productive capacity of one-half portunities if (a) school programming is to of the rate of nonhandicapped workers be criterion-referenced and (b) the school(Lynch, 1979a, b). To examine these pro to-community transition is to be facilitated. grams more closely, a survey instrument was Despite the importance of accurate knowldesigned and administered to facilities in a edge of postschool sheltered work requirelarge midwestern state. The instrument ex ments, no surveys could be found that examined (a) admission barriers, (b) client vari amined facility entrance requirements, client ables, (c) program content, and (d) facility/ disability profiles, or program content. Surschool cooperation. Additional factors were 264 / Education and Training of the Mentally Retarded-December 1980 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.178 on Fri, 05 Aug 2016 04:22:32 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Domain 2: Client Variables examined but are not presented for reasons than incontinent referrals, and that the of brevity. Prior to mailing, the questionwork-oriented sheltered workshop is least naire was field tested to ensure that queslikely to accept clients with behaviors which tions were both clear and relevant. A total would interfere with work productivity, of 56.4% of the state's 110 facilities re sponded to the instrument, a rate of return sufficiently high to permit generalization (Babbie, 1973). Laymen frequently refer to adult activiy, work activity, and sheltered workshops as Results "sheltered facilities." In reality, there are substantial distinctions among the three j, ■,,,■■ rr , types of facilities since adult and work activ Dotnain 1: Admission Factors ,'v lty centers are concerned with individuals Given that community adult activity and possessing markedly limited productive ca work activity centers are designed to meet pacity, while sheltered workshops provide the needs of citizens whose work capacity is services for a higher functioning population. "inconsequential," it was anticipated that In light of the service mission of adult and these facilities would accept incontinent or work activity centers, it was remarkable to acting-out clients all or most of the time. An find (see Table 3) a significant percentage of examination of Tables 1 and 2, however, intrainable and educable clients in these facil dicates that a significant proportion of the ities. adult activity and work activity respondents It was anticipated that adult activity cen would never accept such clients, that actingters would be primarily serving severely in out clients would be admitted more readily volved individuals; work activity centers, somewhat higher functioning clients; and sheltered workshops, individals possibly ca TABLE I pable of competitive employment. An anal ysis of Table 3 suggests that sheltered work Acceptance of Incontinent Referrals , , , , • , , shops are indeed serving high tunctioning clients. A majority of clients in those facilities are functioning in the educable range. Un expectedly, the obverse does not obtain in that adult and work activity centers did not report extensive service to severely and pro foundly retarded populations. Continuing with client variables, age Facility Typ e Adult Work Sheltered Responses Activity Activity Workshop