Resettlement policy and services for disabled people : a Department of Employment discussion paper for the National Advisory Council for the Employment of the Disabled.

  • Great Britain. Department of Employment.
Date:
1972]
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Resettlement policy and services for disabled people : a Department of Employment discussion paper for the National Advisory Council for the Employment of the Disabled. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    34/132 (page 32)
    (c) people requiring special arrangement by employers, viz. adaptations to machinery or premises or the provision of special equipment (d) people whose placing involved special difficulty owing to the nature or severity of their disablement (e) people taking up their first jobs following recent impairment (f) other placements at the discretion of DROs. These groups might very tentatively be regarded as comprising the people who were resettled by the Department or who required concentrated attention and specialised handling. Table 19 Resettled clients 1964-68 Average annual numbers Placed by us and Actual total numbers followed up completing courses ex-industrial rehabilitees 4,718 9,937 117 Figures were collected only in relation to people in these categories who were placed by the Department. We need to allow that for every 100 disabled people who come to us in an ordinary year we might expect to place about 40; another 40 would place themselves and another 20 would become sick or remain unemployed. Every number placed by us needs therefore to be multiplied roughly by 2-5 to give some idea of the numbers coming to us. Table 18 sets out the average annual numbers of people in each category coming to us over the four years 1964-68, ignoring ex-industrial rehabilitees on the ground that we know the exact numbers completing courses and do not therefore require to apply an artificial factor. These are dealt with at Table 19. 118 From these figures we reach in very round terms a total of 45,000 people coming to the Department each year on average from 1964-68 who needed either resettlement or specialised placing activity. We might also say with confidence that the numbers of recently impaired people among them was less than 20,000 taking the fullest account of ex-rehabilitees and trainees, a proportion of whom will have been recently impaired. This accords reasonably well with the fact that about 16,000 people evidently come to the Department from medical sources each year (para 114) — though we know that many of these are not recently impaired. 119 Allowing generously for increases in numbers since 1968 we might guess that of the 225,000 client tasks in 1970 between 50-60,000, or at maximum a quarter, required resettlement or highly specialised placing activity; but not more than one third of these, or perhaps one-twelfth of the total, were newly disabled. The other three quarters of the clients were indeed disabled and to that extent required special consideration, but represented in the main something not markedly dissimilar to ordinary placing activity. 120 This is the only assessment of the Department’s clients that we can base upon quantitative data. However we know other things by experience. We know principally that many of the people who come to the Department have poor employment prospects not just because they are disabled but for reasons connected with age, lack of skill or lack of motivation. A high proportion of the people whom the service generally finds it hard to place are in fact disabled, illness and disability being also one of a number of factors contributing to or arising from social maladjustment. Consequently the DRO finds himself struggling with far more than his fair share of people whose intractable problems intrude far into the social and educational sphere and in relation to whom the kind of employment skills envisaged by the Tomlinson Committee for the resettlement service are often irrelevant. Ae