Center for Developmentally Disabled Honored

Some pile beans, building dexterity. Others, more accomplished, package sponges to be sold for car washing. Some smile and stare; others avert their eyes. All are developmentally disabled.

From learning to change clothes without leaving the dressing room with zippers unzipped to being taught what a stop sign means, about 120 mostly mentally retarded people are given the skills to be more independent at the Outside/Inside Community. Within the nondescript red-brick building on Venice Boulevard there is a mock city, including a market, a bus stop and a beauty salon. Its residents learn to do everyday activities that most people take for granted--such as combing their hair and answering the phone. Terry Westbrook is one of them. With the lessons she learned at another training center, the 28-year-old is able to hold down a job and is looking for an apartment. Because of her success she was chosen Thursday to accept a federal award honoring the program.

Look of Delight

When her name was called, Westbrook’s face crumpled into a look of delight. She stood, head bowed, eyes downcast, during the presentation.

Then, without looking up, she read a speech. Her cadence was thick and slow but the message came through: “It is important to keep building projects like this.” When the applause came, she beamed, then blushed as she covered her face with her hands.

Westbrook, who has Down’s syndrome, accepted a National Certificate of Merit on behalf of the Exceptional Children’s Foundation for its “imaginative use” of federal aid.

Awarded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the certificate also honors the city of Los Angeles for helping to fund the foundation. The Outside/Inside Community was founded two years ago by the foundation, which serves about 1,500 developmentally disabled people through a variety of work, training and recreation programs.

The idea behind training the developmentally disabled, said the foundation’s executive director, Robert D. Shushan, is to “lift their ceiling of expectations.”

With the mentally retarded making up 3% of the population, Shushan said, there is a great need to enable the developmentally disabled to become more self-sufficient. In addition to the mentally retarded, the developmentally disabled also include people with maladies such as cerebral palsy.

Although the Venice Boulevard center works with the severely retarded, Shushan said, the adjective is deceptive.

“An IQ score, a label doesn’t do the trick,” he said. “We’re looking for potential. . . . In the old days if you trained them in the garage that was enough.”

The clean and modern facility is a far cry from any garage.

The model cityscape presents the disabled with both the challenges and the rewards of mainstream society. A street-scene mural stands behind an unlikely bus stop: a black iron and oak-slat bench. Nearby is a pay phone. Both represent hurdles to be cleared.

Elsewhere music and art studios exist to bring out the latent creativity that some of the trainees possess. The studios are filled with art works ranging from slapped-together cardboard projects, splattered with paint, to realistic drawings.

At the department store, handling money and purchasing goods are learned. A model apartment provides a setting for instruction in household chores, a kitchen furnishes culinary instruction. But the difficulty of the training is clear: In the mini-factory, a woman slumped in a wheelchair, bellowing, “Momma.” An attendant had forced her hand to plant a flower in a Styrofoam block.

Those with more training package sponges that will be sold in stores. Participants are ages 18 to 65. Those who master this task will move on to working in factories staffed by the developmentally disabled; some may even advance to mainstream workplaces.

Alumna such as Westbrook are testament to the efficacy of the program. Wearing a blue pantsuit and black tennis shoes, Westbrook is a reticent, somewhat inarticulate woman about 4-feet tall. On the scale of mental disabilities Westbrook ranks about in the middle, Shushan said.

Many Normalities

But thanks to a two-year training program, her life consists of many normalities. She has a boyfriend of five years, goes skiing and camping and has worked in a fast-food restaurant. She also spent 10 days in Seoul, playing on the Special Olympics basketball team and watching the regular events.

Westbrook and her friend of 14 years, Carole Corbette, are hoping to move out of their group home and into an apartment, assisted by federal aid.

The two make a good team, with Corbette being slightly more assertive and open. Handing Westbrook a program, she prompted her friend to say, “Thank you.”

“She’s always telling me what to do,” Westbrook said, laughing.