Will "Sheltered Worshops" have a place in the Future?
We have some friends that get pretty angry when we use the term "sheltered workshops" because they claim their workshops have become "modern industries". These claims are mostly nonsense, but we tend to humor them. Its sort of like discussing politics or religion. There’s just no way to win an argument with them.
However, there seems to be a greater diversity among the workshop agencies at present in that some emphasize transition into community employment, while others haven’t change their model of service delivery in the last 50 years. Some have become comprehensive community-focused agencies, while others haven’t added a new service in decades.
Some have even "converted" to offer a wide array of employment training and placement in the community. For others, old Billy Shakespeare was correct when he said, "A rose by any other name smells the same".
What makes the difference between workshops that are old relics vs. those who fully integrated with the community? Are they tied to old models that dictate that if you start work in a workshop, you will retire there? Do they still have the same narrow list of contracts they had ten years ago? Do they have periodic layoffs of workers due to their limited range of production contracts?
Like any species of living creature, organizations, too, must evolve to survive a changing environment. Like all living things, organizations must adapt to a changing environment or they will become extinct. So it is with sheltered workshops. Adaptation must be more sincere than simply changing the name for political reasons.
There are some programs that have become fully integrated into the community. One sign is that some place more consumers into community-based employment than in their workshops. Others contract with other service agencies to provide specialized skills of independent living throughout their community.
This latter group will be the ones to survive as they provide valuable services to consumers throughout their area. Strategic planning with consumers and others have led them to the belief that the service models of yesterday won’t meet the needs of consumers in a modern, high technology world.
With a strong economy and record low levels of unemployment in the nation, employers often have more open positions than they can fill with workers. The time has never been better to market the skills and abilities of our consumers and to help them attain a permanent place in the workforce.
There is no telling how many thousands more consumers could enter competitive employment if workshops turned their budgets to support people, rather than bricks and mortar and overhead.
Some defend workshops by saying that their workers have made a choice to work there. This may be true in the case of some, but never forget – the quality of a choice depends on the quality of options from which to choose. The old days are gone when a person’s choices were limited to the sheltered workshop or sitting at home. Those programs that adapt will survive.
