PEOPLE WITH intellectual disabilities are being left “demoralised and with nothing to do” as the sheltered workshops they have been working in close down, with little or no guidance on what should replace them.
Inclusion Ireland, the body which represents people with intellectual disabilities, said it is getting numerous calls from “concerned and distressed” parents of people with whose workshops have been closed.
Its chief executive, Deirdre Carroll, said: “There was an understanding that the workshops would not be closed until the review of day services, being carried out by the HSE, was completed.”
Controversy has surrounded the sheltered workshop system, where people with intellectual disabilities carry out low-skilled work in a sheltered environment. The controversy concerns the fact that the workers receive little or no pay and enjoy no employment rights.
More than 4,000 people were in sheltered workshops in 2007 when the HSE initiated its National Review of HSE-Funded Adult Day Services. The report is “currently being completed” according to the HSE and “will be published in due course”.
Ms Carroll said, however, that many had been closed, despite an “understanding” that they would not be closed until the HSE review was completed and recommendations were issued on what should replace them. In many cases, Ms Carroll added, they had been replaced with “little more than a minding service”.
“A lot of people in these workshops were not being paid a proper wage and that was wrong, but for many the work was enjoyable and the money was not the issue.
“Rehab, for instance, has closed all its sheltered workshops and while what they have put in instead may have suited some families, it’s clearly not working for some and has been very distressing for these families.”
Clíodhna O’Neill, programme manager with the Rehab group, said none of its services had been “closed” but its sheltered workshops were in “transition” to “more person-centred programmes” in resource centres.
“Our staff work on programmes with the clients in personal development, whether that is to aspire to employment in the community, to live independently or personal care,” Ms O’Neill added. “We haven’t just closed services and what we’ve replaced them with, I think, is much better.”
Dr Pauline Conroy, a social policy analyst who was commissioned by the HSE in 2007 to work with Cornell University in New York in examining international best practice in the provision of day services, said many providers had closed sheltered workshops because there was such controversy about them, yet no guidance was given on what to provide instead.
“Many operators would have loved some guidance, a memo, a circular, something. In the uncertainty a number took the decision to close,” Dr Conroy said. “The HSE is at fault here. The families are caught in the middle and don’t understand what is going on. The HSE had the opportunity to regulate this matter.”
The HSE was unable to provide a comment over the weekend.
