Kansas State Legislator Says People in Sheltered Workshops "Can't Do Anything"

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the employment of people on the autism spectrum.

Katie Bernard at The Kansas City Star

Kansas disability rights groups are asking a Johnson County Republican to apologize for his “hurtful” comments about developmentally disabled Kansans.

During a committee hearing Tuesday, Rep. Sean Tarwater, a Stilwell Republican, spoke in opposition to an effort to block tax credits for sheltered workshops that hire developmentally disabled Kansans and pay below minimum wage. 

"They are people who really can’t do anything,” Tarwater said in reference to developmentally disabled Kansans housed in such workshops. “If you do away with programs like that they will rot at home.”

Two days later, Disability Rights Center of Kansas and the Kansas Council on Developmental Disabilities issued a pair of statements condemning Tarwater’s comments as derogatory toward disabled Kansans and untrue.

Rocky Nichols, executive director of the Disability Rights Center of Kansas, said Tarwater’s statements demonstrated an old way of thinking and that disabled Kansans contribute to the state outside sheltered workshops that pay below minimum wage.

“They are not ‘rotting.’ The opposite is true – they are succeeding and living the American Dream,” Nichols said. “Many people with disabilities tell us that they feel like they are wasting their talents when they are working in a sheltered workshop, often for pennies an hour,” he added.

 ...

On Thursday, Tarwater countered that the disability rights groups owed him an apology for “dragging those businesses through the mud.” He said he believed the sheltered workshops were important to serve severely disabled individuals who are not capable of taking on work at minimum wage or higher. “Where would they go,” he said. “These people are severely disabled and can’t really work but they have a place to go every day.”

Subminimum Wage Issue in Minnesota

In The Politics of Autism, I write:

Political conflict involves ideas and arguments for which the information is often murky, incomplete, interpretive, and open to manipulation. Just about everything concerning autism is subject to dispute. What is it? What causes it? How many different kinds of it are there? Who has it? What can we do about it? Is it even the right problem to be thinking about? All of these questions, and many others, are the stuff of bitter political battles. The stakes are high: according to one estimate, the national cost of supporting people with autism adds up to $236 billion per year. Of course, such numbers themselves entail controversy. An alternative perspective is that they do not represent the cost of autism, but rather the cost of discrimination against people who have it, and the failure to help them lead independent lives.

Chris Serres at Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

Minnesota would become the fourth state in the nation to prohibit employers from paying people with disabilities less than the state’s minimum wage, under a proposed measure that would phase out the decades-old practice by 2024.

The legislation, which passed a state House committee this week, would force dramatic changes at approximately 100 centers across the state, known as sheltered workshops, that benefit from a loophole in federal labor law that allows them to pay people with disabilities based on their productivity, rather than a fixed hourly rate. In many cases, their pay amounts to just cents an hour for basic tasks, such as packaging merchandise, scrubbing toilets and shredding paper. These state-subsidized workshops, which provide a broad range of support services, employ nearly 10,000 people with disabilities — among the most of any state, according to Minnesota workforce officials.
...
Proponents of the legislation maintain that a gradual phasing out of subminimum wages would enable the state to avoid costly sanctions and would give state workforce officials and families time to develop alternative employment options in the community. “Everyone deserves to earn a minimum wage,” said Jillian Nelson, policy advocate for the Autism Society of Minnesota. “But we can’t just kick people to the streets.”

Still, the measure faces vigorous opposition from many parents of people with significant intellectual and developmental disabilities, who fear their adult children will lose support services and have nowhere to go if the local workshops close. In many smaller towns, these parents maintain, the workshops — sometimes called “day activity centers” — are the only option for community engagement and employment. In some rural communities, workshops are also the primary source of transit, shuttling people to and from work and activities in the community.They also provide a vital source of social interaction for people who would otherwise be stuck spending their days at more isolating group homes, parents maintain.

Segregation and Poverty in Minnesota

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the civil rights of people with autism and other disabilities. 

At the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Chris Serres reports on Minnesota's Olmstead Plan Quality of Life Baseline Report:

Nineteen years after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling opened the doors to integration, thousands of Minnesotans with disabilities continue to live and work in segregated settings that keep them in poverty and limit their daily autonomy.

These are among the principal findings of the state’s first comprehensive survey examining the quality of life of nearly 50,000 Minnesotans with physical, intellectual and developmental disabilities who spend most of their time in settings such as group homes, nursing facilities and cloistered workplaces known as sheltered workshops.

The survey, released this week, also found wide earnings gaps for Minnesotans with disabilities. People who labor in sheltered workshops and day training programs earned just $3.30 to $3.50 an hour, on average — less than half the earnings of those who worked in more-integrated settings in the community.

People in sheltered workshops were also more isolated socially, mostly limiting their daily interactions to other individuals with disabilities, the survey found.

The findings echo those of a 2015 special report by the Star Tribune, which found that Minnesota is among the most segregated states in the nation for working people with developmental disabilities such as Down syndrome and autism. The series also found that hundreds of people with disabilities are being sent, sometimes against their will, to state-licensed group homes where they live with strangers in settings far from home.

More on Sessions Decision to Rescind ADA Guidance

 In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the civil rights of people with autism and other disabilities. 

David M. Perry at Pacific Standard:

On the Thursday afternoon before the Christmas holidays, Attorney General Jeff Sessions' Department of Justice rescinded 25 guidance documents that the department found "unnecessary, inconsistent with existing law, or otherwise improper." The list included 10 texts on disability rights, including one as recent as 2016 (i.e. hardly out of date). This recent document codified the labor rights of disabled people as they move from sheltered workshops paying sub-minimum wage into the integrated economy. Its deletion represents the latest effort of the Trump administration to roll back disability protections in the 21st century.

...
I spoke over the phone to Eve Hill, former deputy assistant attorney general for the DOJ's Civil Rights Division. Hill tells me that technical assistance around the ADA is vital for everyone involved. Removing it doesn't change the law; "the law is the law," she says. But when people don't understand that law, access to services can be threatened, and the courts become the only recourse. Hill says she's angry because the Trump administration is taking away a proactive and "helpful approach," leaving confusion (and the likelihood of litigation) in its wake. 

A Decermber 26 statement from the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities:

On December 21, the U.S. Department of Justice rescinded its Statement on Application of the Integration Mandate of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Olmstead v. L.C. to State and local Governments' Employment Service Systems for Individuals with Disabilities. The statement, which was issued last year, described the obligations of states to administer their employment services for people with disabilities in the most integrated setting appropriate. Evidence-based supported employment services help people with disabilities secure and maintain competitive, integrated employment. They are critical to achieving the ADA's goals of independent living and economic self-sufficiency.

We are extremely concerned about the withdrawal of this guidance document, both because it sends the wrong signal to public entities that are seeking to comply with the ADA and because it may reflect a diminished concern with the importance of providing employment services in the most integrated setting. As the Justice Department notes, withdrawal of this guidance "does not change the legal responsibilities of State and local governments under title II of the ADA, as reflected in the ADA, its implementing regulations, and other binding legal requirements and judicial precedent, including the U.S. Supreme Court’s Olmstead decision." The Statement reflected already established law, and its withdrawal does nothing to change that law, existing settlement agreements, or prior Justice Department findings letters about the application of the ADA's integration mandate and Olmstead to employment systems.

The vast majority of people with disabilities and their families want opportunities for competitive integrated employment. Most employment service providers, in response to best practices, federal law, and DOJ Guidance, are working to change their business models away from sheltered work to competitive integrated employment, and almost all states have embraced an "employment first" approach reflecting that shift. The Department's guidance was consistent with the priority the disability community has placed on enforcement of their civil rights to work alongside and with the same conditions as their peers without disabilities.

We are committed to expanding opportunities for all people with disabilities to have opportunities to work alongside their non-disabled peers for competitive wages and fulfill the ADA’s goals of integration, independence and economic self-sufficiency. We urge the Justice Department to remain committed to these goals as well.

We are also concerned about the process by which the Department announced that it is withdrawing nine other technical assistance documents on the same day. While some of these documents were outdated, government transparency is critically important. We were concerned to see so many documents suddenly withdrawn with little explanation of the reasons for doing so. Guidance documents are important tools to educate all stakeholders about the requirements of the law in a clear fashion, and the withdrawal of some of these guidance documents may create confusion and misunderstanding.

Employment, Sheltered Workshops, and the Cliff

At the Philadelphia Inquirer, Ronnie Polaneczky has a series titled "Falling off the Cliff."  Part 2 examines direct-support professionals.  Part 3 looks at the employment challenges facing disabled people such as an autistic young adult named Eric Heppard.  His parents needed him to take an IQ test to qualify for a Medicaid waiver.  He scored 81, higher than they expected.  That was bad news.

The old rule of thumb said that an IQ higher than 70 made a candidate with an I/DD ineligible for sheltered work in Pennsylvania. But in the last decade or so, there has been a slow shift to a holistic view of candidates — though a handful of states, including
Pennsylvania, have been slow to embrace it, says Celia Feinstein.

"Other states have moved to a more functional definition of developmental disability," says Feinstein, executive director of Temple University's Institute on Disabilities. "For example, you may have an IQ of 90, but if you need support with your activities of daily living, you're probably as disabled as someone whose IQ is 68."

Three years ago, that broad interpretation wasn't made in Pennsylvania, which proved to be Eric's undoing: testing showed that his high IQ rendered him ineligible for the APS program. [Associated Production Services, which runs sheltered workshops] Basically, he was not disabled enough to meet hiring and program criteria for sheltered employment.

"The job fell through our fingers like sand," says Lisa, still sounding shocked. "Everyone said their hands were tied. Eric was devastated."
...

There's a national effort to phase out sheltered workshops — like those run by APS, where Eric had hoped to work — because the disabled people they employ are just as segregated from the greater community as disabled people once were in residential institutions. There's even a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the 1999 Olmstead decision, that says that people with disabilities should work, live, and receive services in the most integrated setting possible.

That's caused a shrinkage in the number of United States sheltered workshops from 3,350 in 2010 to 2,638 in 2016. Currently, about 369,700 disabled adults are employed in sheltered settings, according to the Department of Labor.

While many adults with I/DD, such as Michael Urtz and Julia Tyler, may be thriving in their community-based jobs, such arrangements don't work for everyone, say advocates for adults for whom sheltered work has been a godsend. Their children feel safe from bullying, receive special services and enjoy kinship with coworkers who are similarly disabled.

The Integration Mandate

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the civil rights of people with autism and other disabilities. 

The US Department of Justice has issued a statement: "Application of the Integration Mandate of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Olmstead v. L.C. to State and Local Governments' Employment Service Systems for Individuals with Disabilities."

Nationally, millions of individuals with disabilities spend the majority of their daytime hours receiving employment and day services in segregated sheltered workshops and segregated day settings (including day treatment programs or facility-based day habilitation centers) where they are segregated from non-disabled persons. Many of these individuals are capable of working competitively and earning minimum wage or above in integrated employment and are not opposed to doing so, but they have been unable to access the services and supports that would allow them to find, obtain, and succeed in competitive integrated employment. In the approximately seventeen years since the Supreme Court’s decision in Olmstead v. L.C. ex rel. Zimring, 527 U.S. 581 (1999), regarding the integration mandate of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), some state and local service systems have begun to provide a greater number of integrated community alternatives to individuals in or at risk of segregation in institutions or other segregated settings; yet, despite these advances, many individuals with disabilities who receive employment and day services that are planned, funded, and administered by state and local governments continue unnecessarily to receive services, and spend the majority of their daytime hours, in segregated settings.

A core purpose of the ADA is to “assure equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency” for individuals with disabilities.1 The integration mandate of Title II of the ADA is intended to allow individuals with disabilities to live integrated lives like individuals without disabilities, including by working, earning a living, and paying taxes. The civil rights of persons with disabilities, including individuals with mental illness, intellectual or developmental disabilities, or physical disabilities, are violated by unnecessary segregation in a wide variety of settings, including in segregated employment, vocational, and day programs.

Since the passage of the ADA and the Supreme Court’s decision in Olmstead, the ADA’s Title II integration mandate has been applied in a variety of contexts. The ADA’s integration mandate applies to all the services, programs, and activities of state and local governments, including their employment service systems.2 This guide discusses and explains the requirements of the ADA integration mandate and Olmstead as applied to employment service systems for individuals with disabilities. It complements and supplements, but does not supersede, the “Statement of the Department of Justice on Enforcement of the Integration Mandate of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Olmstead v. L.C.” (June 22, 2011).3

Moving Away from Sheltered Workshops

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the employment of adults with autism and other developmental disabilities. Many posts have discussed programs to provide them with training and experience. 

At The Boston Globe, Katie Johnson writes about sheltered workshops.  Triangle, a 45-year-old Malden nonprofit that once housed a large sheltered workshop, has shifted to placing disabled people into jobs in the community.

“It’s a human rights issue,” said Coleman Nee, chief executive of Triangle, who was the state’s Secretary of Veterans’ Services during the Deval Patrick administration. “Everybody has the ability to be competitively placed if that’s what they want, regardless of the nature of their disability and how much work it might take to get them there.”

Slightly more than one in four working-age people with disabilities is employed, according to the Department of Labor. But the movement to get more of them into the workforce is growing, part of a shift toward inclusion and self-advocacy by people with disabilities, said Margaret Van Gelder, director of employment and family support at the state’s Department of Developmental Services.

“They’re coming into their own, speaking up for themselves, pushing for opportunities they want,” she said.

A decade ago, about 6,000 people with disabilities toiled in 90 such sheltered workshops in Massachusetts, according to the state. In response to federal policy changes, the agency unveiled a plan two years ago to close all such workshops and get everyone into day programs or jobs in the community, a goal it says it will hit by the end of June.

Nationwide, the number of sheltered workshops with sub-minimum-wage certification has dropped by almost half since 2001, from 4,724 to 2,417, according to the Institute for Community Inclusion at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Recent federal lawsuits over sheltered workshops in Oregon and Rhode Island accused the states of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Rhode Island is facing a $1 million annual fine for not taking steps to move people out of these workshops.

Oregong Settlement on Sheltered Workshops

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss employment of adults with autism and other developmental disabilities.

A Tuesday release from the US Justice Department:

The U.S. Justice Department announced today, along with private plaintiffs, that it has entered into a proposed settlement agreement with the state of Oregon that will resolve violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and will impact approximately 7,000 Oregonians with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) who can and want to work in typical employment settings in the community. The private plaintiffs were represented by the Center for Public Representation, Disability Rights Oregon and the law firms of Miller Nash Graham & Dunn LLP and Perkins Coie LLP. The proposed agreement resolves a class action lawsuit by private plaintiffs in which the department intervened. The parties’ proposed settlement agreement must still be approved by U.S. Magistrate Judge Janice Stewart of the District of Oregon, who is presiding over the lawsuit. The agreement will be filed with the court in the coming weeks.

The department alleged that Oregon’s employment services system unnecessarily placed people with I/DD in, or at risk of entering, sheltered workshops instead of in integrated jobs in the community, in violation of the ADA. As interpreted by the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Olmstead v. L.C., the ADA affords individuals with disabilities the right to receive services in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs. Sheltered workshops are segregated facilities that exclusively or primarily employ people with disabilities. They are usually large, institutional facilities in which people with disabilities have little or no contact with non-disabled persons besides paid staff. People with I/DD in sheltered workshops typically earn wages that are well below minimum wage, sometimes pennies per hour. By contrast, supported employment services assist people with I/DD to prepare for, gain and succeed in integrated employment at competitive wages. Approximately 450,000 people with I/DD across the country spend their days in segregated sheltered workshops and facility-based day programs. Approximately 1,900 Oregonians with disabilities currently receive services in sheltered workshops. Since the initiation of the lawsuit, approximately 3,900 Oregonians with disabilities have received services in sheltered workshops, and historically hundreds of students have transitioned each year from Oregon public schools to sheltered workshops.

As a result of the proposed settlement, over the next seven years, 1,115 working-age adults with I/DD who are currently being served in segregated sheltered workshops will have opportunities to work in real jobs at competitive wages. Additionally, at least 4,900 youth ages 14 to 24 years old will receive supported employment services designed to assist them to choose, prepare for, get and keep work in a typical work setting. Half of the youth who receive employment services will receive, at a minimum, an individual plan for employment through the state’s Office of Vocational Rehabilitation Services.

The proposed settlement resolves the first class action lawsuit in the nation to challenge a state funded and administered employment service system, including sheltered workshops, as a violation of the ADA’s integration mandate. The class action, Lane v. Kitzhaber (since renamed Lane v. Brown), was filed in January 2012, by eight named individuals and United Cerebral Palsy of Oregon and Southwest Washington, on behalf of themselves and other individuals with I/DD who are in Oregon sheltered workshops or have been referred to sheltered workshops. In March 2013, the Department of Justice moved to intervene in the lawsuit, seeking to vindicate the rights of thousands of individuals with I/DD across Oregon. The department’s claims included that Oregon violated the ADA by unnecessarily segregating adults with I/DD in sheltered workshops and by placing Oregon youth with I/DD at unnecessary risk of segregation in sheltered workshops.

The proposed agreement recognizes that Oregon has made substantial progress in providing employment services to and improving employment outcomes for individuals with I/DD since the filing of the plaintiffs’ complaint and the department’s complaint-in-intervention. In 2013 and 2015, respectively, Oregon’s then Governor John Kitzhaber issued Oregon Executive Orders 13-04 and 15-01 and the state developed Integrated Employment Plans committing to implement strategies for the Oregon Department of Human Services and Oregon Department of Education to improve Oregon’s employment service system for individuals with I/DD. These plans call upon the state to reduce its reliance on segregated sheltered workshops and increase its investment in supported employment services.

“Work is a fundamental aspect of most people's lives,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, head of the Civil Rights Division. “People with disabilities deserve opportunities to work alongside their friends, peers, and neighbors without disabilities and to earn fair wages. We are pleased that the state of Oregon has fully embraced integrated employment services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and we look forward to the new ways people with intellectual and developmental disabilities will be able to contribute to their communities as this proposed agreement is implemented.”

“This proposed agreement not only realizes the requirements of federal law, but just as importantly, it embraces policies and practices to support both youth and adult community members with disabilities to successfully interact and work alongside non-disabled Oregonians,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Billy J. Williams of the District of Oregon. “The implementation of the agreement will bring all of our communities together in recognizing the work capabilities of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.”

The Civil Rights Division enforces the ADA, which authorizes the Attorney General to investigate whether a state is serving individuals in the most integrated settings appropriate to his or her needs. Please visit www.ada.gov/olmstead to learn more about the division’s ADA Olmstead enforcement efforts and www.justice.gov/crt to learn more about the other laws enforced by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

After Sheltered Workshops?

 AP reports:

A recent federal ruling aims to help find jobs for people with developmental disabilities, but some Wisconsin families are worried about how it will be implemented.

The decision involves working conditions for people who have cognitive disabilities such as autism and Down syndrome. Some may have trouble reading, counting money or being in large groups, which leaves them with limited options.

Often they end up employed at so-called "sheltered workshops," where they perform basic tasks but are separated from nondisabled workers — in part so they can get needed services or be in stress-free surroundings.

The landscape shifted in 1999, when the U.S. Supreme Court said people with disabilities should be given every chance to work and live in integrated settings, where they're surrounded by non-disabled people as much as possible.

The ruling drew renewed attention in January when the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, finalized instructions on how to comply with the decision. The agency also gave states five years to develop transition plans for compliance.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services is inviting public comment through Sept. 2, before it submits its transition plan to CMS on Oct. 2.

Some parents and guardians of those with disabilities worry about what will happen if sheltered workshops are disallowed. They acknowledge the federal decision is well-intentioned but worry that lower-functioning individuals who lose that option could be left with no alternatives at all.

Legislation on Sheltered Workshops

Sheltered workshops have fallen into disrepute, and lawmakers want alternatives. Joy Resmovits writes at The Huffington Post:

On Wednesday, Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), along with Reps. John Kline (R-Minn.), Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) and George Miller (D-Calif.), announced a sweeping bipartisan, bicameral deal that was long in the making. The bill aims to modernize the 1998 law, which oversees $3 billion in job training programs, by eliminating 15 programs and creating universal performance metrics. Many expect it to advance.

For students with special needs in particular, the bill aims to make states more responsible for making sure those students graduate into jobs that allow them to make minimum wage and work alongside adults who have no disabilities. This move extends the often-controversial concept of inclusion in public schools into the workforce. Under the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, another Harkin initiative [sic], students with special needs must be given a "free and appropriate public education" in the "least restrictive environment."

But unlike IDEA, which covers students with special needs until they turn 21, workforce training programs for individuals with disabilities aren't entitlements, meaning that there are far more students who are eligible than receive the service, known as Vocational Rehabilitation.

Settlement on RI Sheltered Workshops

An April 8 release from the Department of Justice:

The Justice Department announced today that it has entered into a statewide settlement agreement that will resolve violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) for approximately 3,250 Rhode Islanders with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD). The landmark ten year agreement is the nation’s first statewide settlement to address the rights of people with disabilities to receive state funded employment and daytime services in the broader community, rather than in segregated sheltered workshops and facility-based day programs. Approximately 450,000 people with I/DD across the country spend their days in segregated sheltered workshops or in segregated day programs. The agreement significantly advances the department's work to enforce the Supreme Court's decision in Olmstead v. L.C, which requires persons with I/DD be served in the most integrated setting appropriate .

As a result of the settlement, 2,000 Rhode Islanders with I/DD who are currently being served by segregated programs will have opportunities to work in real jobs at competitive wages. Additionally, over the next ten years, 1,250 students with I/DD will receive services to help transition into the workforce.

“Today’s agreement will make Rhode Island a national leader in the movement to bring people with disabilities out of segregated work settings and into typical jobs in the community at competitive pay,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Jocelyn Samuels for the Civil Rights Division. “As Rhode Island implements the agreement over the next ten years, it will make a dramatic difference in the lives of people with disabilities, businesses and communities across the state. We congratulate Governor Chafee and state officials for signing this agreement, as we believe that Rhode Island will be a model for the nation with respect to integrated employment for people with disabilities.”

“The filing of today’s consent decree is a critically important event in Rhode Island history,” said U.S. Attorney Peter F. Neronha for the District of Rhode Island. “It ushers in a new day of opportunity – opportunity for Rhode Island residents with intellectual or developmental disabilities to live, work and spend their recreational time alongside their fellow Rhode Islanders. It is an opportunity for this State to move forward; to recognize, finally, that we are better, stronger, when all of us – all of us –are interwoven in the fabric that is Rhode Island.”

Under the agreement, Rhode Island has agreed to provide:

• · Supported employment placements that are individual, typical jobs in the community, that pay at least minimum wage, and that offer employment for the maximum number of hours consistent with the person’s abilities and preferences, amounting to an average of at least 20 hours per week across the target population;
• · Supports for integrated non-work activities for times when people are not at work including mainstream educational, leisure or volunteer activities that use the same community centers, libraries, recreational, sports and educational facilities that are available to everyone;
• · Transition services for students with I/DD, to start at age 14, and to include internships, job site visits and mentoring, enabling students to leave school prepared for jobs in the community at competitive wages;
• · Significant funding sustained over a ten year period that redirects funds currently used to support services in segregated settings to those that incentivize services in integrated settings.

The ten year agreement will allow the state to ensure that the services necessary to support individuals with I/DD in competitive, integrated jobs will not disappear with a change in administration or legislative leadership. As a result of this commitment, the business community has already stepped up to partner with the state. The U.S. Business Leadership Network (USBLN), a network of Fortune 500 companies, and Walgreens will co-host a regional business summit in Rhode Island in June 2014 to explore how to improve those partnerships.

The agreement is the result of an ADA investigation that began in January 2013 into Rhode Island’s day activity service system for people with I/DD. The department, the state, and the City of Providence entered into an interim settlement agreement in June 2013. The interim settlement agreement focused on a single provider, which was one of the largest facility-based employment service providers in the state’s system, and a school-based sheltered workshop at a Providence, R.I., high school, which was a point of origin for many people entering the provider’s workshop.

The department continued its investigation of the statewide system, and in January 2014 issued findings determining that the statewide system over-relied on segregated services, to the exclusion of integrated alternatives, in violation of the ADA. The department found workers with I/DD in settings where they had little or no contact with persons without disabilities, and where they earned an average wage of $2.21 per hour. The investigation found that workers typically remain in such settings for many years, and sometimes decades. The department also found that students in Rhode Island schools were often not presented with meaningful choices to participate in integrated alternatives, such as integrated transition work placements and work-based learning experiences, which put students at serious risk of unnecessary postsecondary placement in segregated sheltered workshops and facility-based day programs.

Since June 2013, the state and city have provided supported employment services to people with I/DD transitioning from the original two facilities covered by the interim settlement agreement. Many of these individuals have now accessed jobs in typical work settings where they can interact with non-disabled coworkers and customers, and enjoy the same employment benefits as their non-disabled peers. Individuals have secured jobs at both locally owned and national companies. Because of the interim settlement agreement, Pedro , an individual who transitioned from the in-school sheltered workshop to the adult workshop, where he earned just 48 cents an hour, is now making minimum wage working at a restaurant. Peter , another former sheltered workshop employee who was earning approximately $1.50 per hour, now has a job earning more than minimum wage working for the state as a custodian at a hospital. Louis has gone from earning sub-minimum wages performing rote tasks at the sheltered workshop to a full-time position at a state hospital, where he uses his strong computer skills and passion for mathematics to generate Excel reports, record time sheets, and complete other office tasks.

For more information on these individuals and others, please visit the Department’s Faces of Olmstead website .
Please visit www.ada.gov/olmstead to learn more about the Division’s ADA Olmstead enforcement efforts, and www.justice.gov/crt to learn more about the laws enforced by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division

Update on Sheltered Workshops in Oregon

A previous post discussed a suit against sheltered workshops in Oregon. The Oregonian reports:

Gov. John Kitzhaber on Thursday announced plans to move more Oregonians with severe disabilities into the general workforce and gradually decrease state funding to nonprofit sheltered workshops.

The governor, facing a class-action lawsuit by critics of the workshops, issued an executive order affirming Oregon's plan to help the disabled find and keep jobs in mainstream workplaces.

A key goal of the state's Employment First plan is to halt a cycle in which special education students graduate high school and immediately take jobs in sheltered workshops that, by U.S. law, are allowed to pay less than the federal minimum wage.

Kitzhaber also announced he was appointing Mike Maley, deputy director of the state's Office of Developmental Disabilities Services, as Oregon's first Statewide Employment Coordinator for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities. Maley, a lifelong Oregonian who has spent his career working with the disabled, will help implement the executive order.

Sheltered Workshops in Oregon

The Oregonian reports:

Oregon unlawfully segregates people with disabilities in sheltered workshops instead of providing them more work opportunities in the public midst, federal authorities allege.

In a news conference Monday, officials with the U.S. Justice Department said they have joined a class-action lawsuit filed by people with disabilities against Gov. John Kitzhaber and the state of Oregon last year, demanding changes to the sheltered workshop system
...


Lane v. Kitzhaber was so named because it pits Paula Lane, who earned as little as 40 cents an hour in a sheltered workshop in Beaverton, against Gov. John Kitzhaber as Oregon's chief executive. The lawsuit aims to provide workshop laborers such as Lane, who has multiple disabilities including autism, with job coaches and other professional supports so that they can work at regular jobs in the public midst, said Bob Joondeph, executive director of Disability Rights Oregon.

As it stands, he said, the majority of working Oregonians with serious disabilities find themselves segregated into workshop settings. They often toil in jobs for nonprofits that pay poorly and sometimes give participants practice work when there are no jobs for them to do.
Oregon has not developed adequate services to offer people a chance to work outside the workshops, Joondeph said.

"A person cannot choose to use a service," he said, "that is not made available to them."