Howard Lytle Presents to Congressional Hearings

Special Education and Rehabilitation Hearings before the Subcommittee on Special Education of the Committee of Education and Labor, House of Representatives, Eighty-Sixth Congress on H.R. 1119, H.R. 3465. H.X. Res. 488. H.J. Res. 494, bills regarding the field of special education and rehabilitation. Hearings held in Chicago, IL may 13 and 14, 1960.

Statement of Dr. Howard G. Lytle, National Vice President, Goodwill Industries, Indianapolis, IN

Mr. Chairman and committee members, my name is Howard G. Lytle. I am Vice President of Goodwill Industries of America, which has a membership of 123 local organizations. These local organizations provided rehabilitation and employment for more than 38,000 handicapped people in 1959. I am also a member of the executive committee and treasurer of the National Association of Sheltered Workshops and Homebound Programs.

I am also executive secretary of Indianapolis Goodwill Industries which provided rehabilitation service and employment for over 600 handicapped persons last year.

All of us in Goodwill Industries are grateful to the members of this committee for their interest in and progressive outlook toward solving the problems which affect our handicapped citizens in a highly competitive economic society.

Up until the last few years the major interest in rehabilitation has been in the area of physical medicine which would result in the restoration of injured or weakened tissues to an optimum level of functioning. Within the last few years, however, there has come a realization that after a man has a restoration of physical functioning so far as that is possible, there still comes the problem of seeing that he has opportunity for training and employment which shall enable him to secure a job in regular economic life. There is also a growing realization that a significant number of physically handicapped and mentally retarded and, to some extent emotionally disturbed persons will find it extremely difficult ever to be employed in ordinary commercial and industrial activity. For these, long term employment in a sheltered workshop seems to be the only answer in the light of our knowledge at this point.

A sheltered workshop, however, is also an essential part of any program of rehabilitation.

1. A sheltered workshop presents the environment necessary for the whole series of services involved in vocational evaluation, personal adjustment, industrial training (not the same as vocational training), vocational training and the development of both physical and emotional tolerances for the handicapped persons.

2. The sheltered workshop provides a proving ground to test the validity of the ideas, policies, programs, procedures, techniques and modalities, engineered and applied in the laboratories and practices of the medically oriented rehabilitation center. It also provides the data to feedback to the less industrially sophisticated professional workers in the rehabilitation centers in order that they may develop more adequate programs of physical restoration and psychological counseling.

3. It orients the handicapped person to the demands of an industrially organized society so that he becomes a better workman as a result of his preliminary experience in the sheltered workshop.

4. It helps the handicapped person develop an appreciation of and a desire to meet quantitative and qualitative standards of production.

5. A sheltered workshop adds a motivation factor to the standard practices of occupational therapy in that it provides a pay check as motivation for proper use and development of muscles.

6. A sheltered workshop is more effective in offering training programs to develop skills in handicapped people in a wide variety of trades than is the normal trade school. This is because the workshop not only demands a skill but also demands levels of production which are geared to the handicapped individual's potential and which more nearly approximate the demands which commercial shops will expect of its workers.

7. The sheltered workshop, through its paycheck, provides an immediate incentive to the handicapped worker to put forth his best. The goal of a paycheck assists in the personality adjustment of handicapped persons who need such service.

In 1957 a survey of rehabilitation resources, needs, and facilities in Marion County, Ind., was conducted under the auspices of the State board of health, the county medical society, the health and welfare council, with assistance from the labor unions, the insurance carriers, chamber of commerce and church federation. It was very interesting that time after time the medical men who responded to questionnaires concerning the needs of their patients, stressed greater development of workshop facilities as the major need of the community in this field. They felt, rightly or wrongly, that the medical care program was reasonably adequate but that service beyond the medical were inadequate.

Indianapolis Goodwill Industries, of which I am executive secretary, has for the past 2 years, conducted one of the research demonstration projects under section 4(a)(1) of Public Law 565 (Vocational Rehabilitation Amendments Act of 1954) .

In our demonstration project we have been taking those clients who had need of personal adjustment because of emotional disturbances. A number of them have been given medical rehabilitation and vocational training, but were found to be unemployable because of these emotional disturbances. We have now achieved a performance level in which we are able to place 70 percent of the persons in this project in employment; 40 percent have been moved on to private employment and 30 percent are temporarily employed in our workshop for further guidance and training beyond the 12 weeks program specified in our demonstration project. It is our belief that a high percentage of this group, which have moved from the demonstration program into our sheltered workshop can be placed within 6 months to a year in private employment.

One case may be illustrative. There was a young woman referred to us, suffering from a spina bifida. She had 36 operations in 10 years but was unemployable because of certain emotional disturbances (which one would naturally expect after such an extended experience in surgery), and was rated as seriously mentally retarded, by clinical psychologists. After 16 weeks of experience in the workshop, it became advisable to revalue her mental abilities and her IQ was found to be 9 points above that at which she was rated when she was referred to our shop. In addition, she had learned something about work, developed motivation to work and was placed in private employment. After 7 months she still holds her job, has received two wage increases and is considered a competent worker in the spot in which she was placed. Our workshop was the "court of last resort" for this person. The judgment had been, previous to the experience in our shop, that her future would be in an institution for chronically ill. Incidentally, she is maintaining herself in her own living arrangements.

It is my firm conviction that a primary demand in the development of rehabilitation of many of those who were hitherto considered nonfeasible, is the development of rehabilitation workshops, properly managed, properly supervised and with proper professional counsel from psychologists, personnel directors, industrial training directors and industrial managers.

At this point, I speak for myself because I have no authority to speak for any other person. I believe that Federal grants made for establishment of sheltered workshops for the development of vocational evaluation programs and personal adjustment programs — for experimental work — could well be expanded. Our own clients at Indianapolis pay back annually in Federal social security and Federal income taxes three times the amount of the Federal grant, to us. In addition, those who leave us for private employment pay back many times the amount invested in them in such taxes withheld by employers in private economic activity.

At this point in my experience, I do not favor appropriations providing long-term grants for service to handicapped workers. I do believe, however, that once research and demonstration grants are made, the local community will find them of sufficient value to pick up the cost of continuing service programs based on the results obtained in these research and demonstration projects. This is true in our own community and we have every reason to believe that, at the end of the third year of our research demonstration grant on March 31, 1961, the community resources will undertake the financing of the continuation of the program on a service basis.

I believe also that Federal grants to such local groups as may have community support behind them for the construction, expansion and equipping of sheltered workshops, will provide such demonstration of the value of the workshops as to command local support for the continuation and development of their service programs. I am also convinced that sheltered workshops which carry on programs conforming to the set of standards proposed by the Institute on Workshop Standards, at a cost of somewhere between $500 and $1,000 per client, depending on the needs of the individual client, can give service so that such clients can take advantage of opportunities to move into regular industrial and commercial activity. Over the years they will repay in taxes and self-support, with consequential savings to our relief funds, 10 to 50 times the amount invested in their rehabilitation.

Some weeks ago I was discussing that matter with a businessman in Indianapolis and outlining our results and the costs. I mentioned these figures which I have presented to you as the cost of rehabilitation and said that the community would have to determine whether the community could afford to buy this program with this price tag.

His reply was significant. "Howard, the community can't afford not to buy it."

I mentioned to another businessman that it had cost us $1,500 to get a paraplegic orphan boy rehabilitated vocationally. The medical program had been carried through, but to prepare him for industrial work, it cost us close to $1,500. I mentioned that the boy would probably pay it all back in income taxes and savings to relief funds. His reply, "That's all right. For $1,500 you made a man. This community never made a better investment."

To sum up :

1. The major need in rehabilitation today is more adequate rehabilitation workshop programs with adequate facilities.

2. The workshop program, under competent management and supervision, provides the best environment for vocational evaluation, personal adjustment, vocational training, work experience, and development of work tolerance that we have yet found.

3. The rehabilitation workshops are rehabilitating a substantial number of people who hitherto were considered nonfeasible.

4. The investment in facilities, research and demonstration projects pays off ten to fifty fold.

5. Service programs based on the experience in research demonstration projects should continue to be the responsibility of the local community.

6. Grants for the construction and expansion of sheltered work-shops should be put on a par with grants for construction and expansion of hospitals under the Hill-Burton Act.

Thank you, gentlemen, for your time and kind consideration.