Monday, 6 July 2015

Lamenting The Few Employment Opportunities For Adults With Intellectual Disabilities

By Edna Booker


Folks afflicted with intellectual disabilities have many challenges because of their conditions. They include omnipresent difficulties in gaining paying employment to support themselves. The government spends billions of dollars in programs intended to enable adults with intellectual disabilities gain employment. Despite this in the United States, an excess of half of such adults are currently either not working or are searching for employment unsuccessfully.

The SSA or Social Security Administration programs benefit intellectually challenged people. These are those impaired in cognitive or communicative functions, those with low levels of IQ and those with serious impairments in social or personal functions. Administration in Social Security programs provide vital lifelines to such people.

In the event a person has intellectual disabilities and has difficulty gaining access to Social Security Administration benefits, a Portsmouth VA disability rights lawyer can give assistance in pursuing their claims. Such an attorney can help with the initial application or in making an appeal against a termination or denial of disability benefits.

Recent studies and research results show that a small forty-four percentage of those afflicted by intellectual disabilities feature in the labour force as looking for employment or actually working. An even small figure of them, thirty-four in percentage hold jobs currently. This figure cowers in comparison to the seventy-three percentage among the able employees featuring on the workforce. A further twenty-eight in percentage of those adults afflicted with intellectual disabilities have never featured in the working force.

It is natural to expect that only a few intellectually challenged people have jobs compared to normal people. However, the troubling dilemma of these figures arises from the little progress attained in getting the disabled into employment. This is despite the government huge expenditure. Studies reveal that the percentage of intellectually challenged adults in the workforce has remained stagnant for four decades.

The term disabled defines a wide number of people with the disabilities involved in the workforce. It often pin points those having an IQ much lower than seventy-five. It identifies those people with limitations in general life abilities such as those unable to handle money. The term also identifies individuals who have developed autism and such mind maladies as Down syndrome.

Given a chance, adults with mind challenges may perform certain jobs well. Research has shown sixty-two percent of the disabled working in competitive environments have been working for longer than three years. This means that if more efforts were directed towards getting disabled adults employed, they would contribute towards their self-support or dependence reduction. Expecting low performances from intellectually disabled persons is a problem needing address. These employees usually face segregation in their workplaces. This denies them progress opportunities while making it hard for them attain new skills. These obstacles must be seriously addressed.

Until most adults having intellectual disabilities have access to gainful employment, they will retain dependence to Social Security Administration disability benefits for their financial support. These benefits could be enough to cater for most adults. However, they have limitations based on past income and state maximums.




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