Enabling the Disabled to Work : Agency Finds Job Market Opening for Its Mentally Impaired Clients

Tim Hutchinson remembers waiting for a bus with several of his mentally impaired students about 10 years ago, when a passing driver gawked at the group a bit too long.

“He slammed into the car in front of him,” Hutchinson remembers. “I went home that night shaking my head. . . . I couldn’t believe we were that much of a spectacle to people.”

Much has changed in the world during the past decade, however, including society’s acceptance of those who are different, said Hutchinson, program director of Saddleback Community Enterprises, or SCE, a nonprofit vocational training and job placement program.

The result is that the program, which since 1974 has trained clients and then sought jobs for them, now finds employers knocking at its doors.

“The business world’s social awareness is growing. Now, we get calls from employers.”

While the program’s students still are stared at by unthinking people and some doors in the job market remain closed, “over the last 10 or 15 years, people have become very aware that disabled adults are people, too,” Hutchinson said.

Saddleback Community Enterprises, which receives most of its $4-million annual budget from the state, serves 225 students who have mild to severe clinical brain disorders ranging from cerebral palsy to Down’s syndrome.

The program’s mission is to teach life skills, which may mean using a spoon or learning assembly, maintenance or restaurant work.

The goal is to help the mentally impaired adults achieve self-respect and avoid being segregated from life.

“Otherwise, many of our students would be sitting in front of the television, by themselves, day after day,” Hutchinson said.

About 90 of them work at outside jobs and another 90 are paid for assembly work at the program’s own workshop.

Client David Grimes, 28, said his goal was to be on his own, earn his own money and pay for his own apartment.

“My dad wasn’t all for me leaving, but my mom knows that it’s good for me to have my own place,” said Grimes, who has mild cerebral palsy and epilepsy. He now assembles custom knee braces at Innovation Sports, an Irvine-based company.

The program helped him find employment, Grimes said. “Sometimes it took me months to find a job,” and often employers would “see me and brush me off because my speech is a little slow. I like this job. Everyone treats me OK.”

Ed Montes, operations manager for Innovation Sports, said he had apprehensions when an SCE representative first approached him.

“It was a fear of the unknown, of something we’ve never tried before,” Montes said. “Mostly, I was concerned about how my other employees would react.”

Montes polled a few workers who gave him the thumbs up. A short while later, Grimes and another client, Matt Waters, were hired.

So far, their work has been “pretty solid,” Montes said. “They are evaluated like any other employees, and we consider them part of our family. I think they will actually teach our employees good work habits.”

Helping to entice employers are tax breaks and other financial incentives provided by state and federal governments. Businesses can deduct up to 40% of the cost of hiring a mentally disabled person.

But “that’s not why we hired Dave and Matt,” Montes said. “We feel you need to help out the community and give people a chance to show what they can do.”

Students are trained in several large workshops in an industrial complex in Mission Viejo.

Education is slow and laborious, with emphasis on repetition. Each student has a job coach who teaches employment skills and how to work with other people.

When trainees are placed at a company, the job coach accompanies them to the job until it becomes familiar.

Most of them earn only the minimum wage, but it is the paycheck rather than the amount that matters most.

“I’ve seen them on their first payday with that check in their hand, all smiles,” said Lee Qualls, the program’s job-placement director. “The nearest thing I can compare it to is like a high school graduate. There’s a sense of accomplishment and self-worth that getting paid gives them.”

Today, the organization’s biggest obstacle to placing the workers in jobs is simply a depressed economy.

“Our No. 1 problem is that we’re real susceptible to business cycles,” Hutchinson said.

Another is transportation. More than 90% of the workers depend on Dial-A-Ride and buses to travel to their jobs, and jobs on weekends and late evenings go unfilled because few buses run then. And Dial-A-Ride is scheduled to be eliminated in October, leaving program officials wondering how they’ll cope.

By the end of the year, one of the tax breaks offered by the federal government is scheduled to expire, and the Department of Labor isn’t supporting its renewal, Hutchinson said.

But program officials have learned to take setbacks with aplomb.

“It’s just another disaster of the day,” Hutchinson said. “We’ll deal with it.”

But sometimes, the jobs don’t run entirely smoothly.

In Laguna Niguel, the city employed two SCE clients to set up for and clean up after meetings and banquets at the city’s senior and community center. But the council recently determined the SCE people could not handle the job duties, which changed depending on the group and activity scheduled for the center. The council decided to hire four part-time workers instead.

“The job kind of evolved from what the council had in mind at first,” said Hutchinson, who has managed to place one of the two workers at another job. “This happens occasionally, not very often.”

But other cities’ experiences have been more pleasant.

In San Juan Capistrano, which hires clients for office maintenance, Mayor Collene Campbell said, “Sometimes I go to City Hall early, and I see them and talk with them and watch what they do.

“They’re great. They care more about their jobs and do them with so much responsibility. We can all learn a lot about how to do our jobs from these people.”