From Politico.com:

Three young adults with intellectual disabilities are working as interns in Congress, courtesy of a new pilot program affiliated with Mason LIFE, a post-secondary program for adults with intellectual disabilities at George Mason University.

While the internships don’t guarantee future paid employment, organizers are hopeful that the office experience and self-confidence the students gain will give their resumes a welcome boost.

Mississippi Republican Rep. Gregg Harper, whose son has Fragile X syndrome, reached out to Mason LIFE to get the internship program started.

“After dealing with these issues for 20-plus years, that’s kind of where our heart is,” Harper said. “A lot of times, when you get out of high school and you’re dealing with intellectual disabilities, you fall off the educational face of the Earth. Sometimes you’re looking to give hope to some of these families who want their child to continue on.”

From the [Allentown, PA] Daily Call, with video:

Twenty-one-year-old Cameron Bell is among thousands of students with disabilities who will lose their minimum-wage jobs when they leave high school this year. Cameron, who has Down syndrome, has reached the maximum schooling age for special education students.

Experts say the economic downturn and the shifting offshore of low-wage jobs are placing new, daunting barriers before this group, who traditionally have a harder time getting jobs than do their peers without disabilities.

”It’s a struggle,” said Marcie Hrycyszyn, Cameron’s teacher and the school-to-work coordinator [for the Bethlehem Area School District.] ”Mailroom jobs were always plentiful for my students. But they are now being taken by people who have been laid off or college grads.”

A report from Cornell University’s Employment and Disability Institute finds that only 16.8 percent of Americans with disabilities are employed, down from a high of 28.8 percent in 1989.

Earlier post here.

A plea for civility

Liane Kupferberg Carter, a writer who has a child with autism, writes in the Huffington Post that she’d like to see an end to the “war raging within the autism community.”

Angry arguments over such topics as vaccines, purported autism cures and neurodiversity are preventing the community from finding common ground, she says. An excerpt:

…whether you are trying to heal autism through genetic research, environmental studies, or are urging acceptance of neurodiversity, there is one thing on which everyone can surely agree: we love our children. They deserve greater awareness, acceptance and opportunity. We desperately need more research on promising treatments, and programs to meet the housing and employment needs of a population that is rapidly aging up.

On the eve of World Autism Awareness Day, I’m pleading for more civility in our community. Open debate that is not personal, petty or mean. There’s just too much at stake. How can we expect Congress to listen to us, when we are so divided among ourselves?

Our children deserve our respect. Our commitment. Our hope.

We aren’t the enemies.

Autism is.

Related post here.

Neil Greenspan, writing in the Huffington Post, says the fundamental problems facing adults with autism-related disabilities are rarely addressed by the media. Reasonably typical, he says, is a young adult of his acquaintance who lives alone and is unemployed and socially isolated.

Among the problems Greenspan sees for adults with autism:

• A lack of organized support for socialization or recreation;
• A lack of job prospects, coupled with a lack of effective help in finding and maintaining work;
• A lack of housing options for adults who need some supervision or support;
• A shortage of trained medical professionals and coordinated care.

An excerpt:

Current policies and practices usually condemn adults with autism to constricted lives of mostly sub-optimal choices. Progress on the core deficiencies identified above will have to be achieved if the majority of adults with autism are to have even a modest chance for reasonably fulfilling and productive lives. Continuation of the status quo will represent a moral as well as a policy failure, as warehousing should be for consumer goods, not people.

Greenspan is an immunologist in the Department of Pathology at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

Atalissa case prompts call for review of U.S. subminimum wage provision

From the [Cedar Rapids, Iowa] Gazette:

In the wake of a scandal involving the alleged exploitation of workers with intellectual disabilities, Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin is calling for a review of a federal law that allows employers to pay workers with disabilities less than the federal minimum wage.

But organizations like Goodwill Industries are rising to defend the lower wages for workers with disabilities, saying they can’t afford to employ as many workers at higher rates. As an example, a 21-year-old woman with cerebral palsy who types labels for Goodwill in Iowa City earns $1.25 per hour.

A spokesman for the organization said elimination of the subminimum wage provision would cause 500 people to lose their Goodwill jobs in Iowa City alone.

The federal law permits qualifying employers to set wages for workers with disabilities based on their productivity rather than the hours they work. Intense federal scrutiny of the law was prompted by allegations last year that workers with disabilities were paid only $65 a month to work for a turkey processing company in Atalissa, Iowa.

From the Washington Post, Federal Times, Government Executive.com:

Despite a federal commitment to hiring employees with disabilities, federal managers are “not prepared” to hire and supervise workers with disabilities in the workplace, according to a new survey by the Federal Managers Association and Telework Exchange.

Of 513 employees who were surveyed, the study found nearly half reported they had not received adequate training to effectively manage or retain employees with disabilities. Some 58 percent were not aware of an federal mandate issued ten years ago that ordered agencies to increase employment opportunities for people with disabilities.

“On the surface, I think people thought, ‘Our agency really is committed to hiring people with disabilities,’ ” said Cindy Auten, general manager of the Telework Exchange. “But looking at what they’re actually implementing, there is a gap in terms of providing reasonable accommodations …”

… The percentage of the federal workforce with targeted disabilities — deafness, blindness, missing limbs, partial or complete paralysis, convulsive disorders, mental retardation, mental illness and limb or spine distortions — dropped from 0.96 percent in fiscal 1998 to 0.92 percent in fiscal 2007, according to a report issued last year by the government’s National Council on Disability. The number of those employees declined by more than 14 percent over that period, from 28,035 to 23,993.

From a press release from Enable America:

Hiring people with disabilities is not just the “right thing to do,” says the Labor Department’s top disability expert. It is “the necessary thing to do for the growth of our economy, and especially for the growth of our global economy.”

The remarks by Kathy Martinez, assistant secretary for the Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy, at a forum in Tampa, Florida, were part of a six-state “listening tour” aimed at increasing employment for people with disabilities. The sessions are billed as opportunities for members of the public to provide input to senior federal officials on more effective ways to employ all people with disabilities.

Martinez [who is blind] says it is crucial that the federal government take action on hiring people with disabilities if they are to ask others to do the same.

A recent study found that less than one percent of federal workers are classified as having disabilities.

It’s estimated that more than 70 percent of working-aged people with disabilities are not working, and 90 percent of them live in poverty. Related post here.

The Tampa session was sponsored by non-profit Enable America.

Related posts here.

(Kathy Martinez photo from ODEP.)