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It takes two to help the disabled become self sufficient.
These two are: Rehabilitation and Education. By themselves they can't help the disabled because in the words of a song, b. "You can't have One Without the other. Or put another way each must complement the other. To show how each must complement the other, I would like to refer to my country's failure to have these two complement each other. Thirty years ago, a president mandated that our disabled be helped become self sufficient by making two systems rehabilitation and education, complementary; the rehabilitation system was mandated to help the long term disabled and the educational system was mandated to insure that the disabled received the appropriate education that would enable them to become employed taxpayers and contributing members of society. If these had happened then most likely checks would have been placed checks upon a now unchecked rise of disability. It did not happen and now we add almost 1,000,000 individuals added annually to the disabled roles. Rehabilitation may not have fully complied with its mandates because of its funding mechanism. This mechanism is called closure. Closure based funding is detrimental to the long term disabled because under it they may discover that they only receive token help. You become a client, then you are terminated and six months later you are reinstated. Reinstatement starts the whole process over and most likely the long term disabled will never receive the appropriate help required. If the disabled are truly to be helped then another form of funding needs to be instituted. It is called performance based funding which is dependent upon the number of clients placed back to work not the number of cases opened and closed each year. Performance based funding would most likely insure that the long term disabled will receive rehabilitation which would reintegrate them back into society. Under it they will not be subjected to the revolving door rehabilitative approach called closure. The educational system may have failed because local bureaucrats were more interested in getting reelected than in truly helping the disabled received appropriate education. Appropriate education would most likely have moved the disabled from dependence upon government to dependence upon their own skills. Appropriate education would have turned them into taxpayers by providing then with that great equalizer called employment. Employment leads to a higher degree of self-sufficiency and independence. These two in turn lead to greater degree of empowerment. Self-sufficiency, independence and empowerment all lead to a greater degree of inclusion for all disabled citizen. Go To Page: 1 2
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