Excerpted From NPR site a year ago

I have a son with Downs Syndrome. I know a lot of people with intellectual disabilities. Without exception, they love to work. Probably more so than the average person, because work can give them a sense of competence they can’t get elsewhere.

They all work in sheltered workshop settings. What I don’t understand is the dogma that this kind of work is unacceptable. This flies into the face of what I see nearly everyday. People who are very happy to work and proud of what they do.

I have seen the alternative, where the sheltered work programs are shut down. And people like my son are warehoused in programs that “include” people with intellectual disabilities by making them sit most of the day in a stuffy building playing with scraps pf paper and puzzles, and getting “included in the community” by a field trip to the Mall.

I wonder if the zealots who want to close down these kind of programs really work with the more disabled of the population ?

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