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for an article made from materials which cost the welfare authority 20/-. This is not
economic independence but at least the patients can feel that it is not charity. It is
hoped that as the numbers of occupational centres and trained personnel increase,
more and more handicapped people will be able to graduate from home craftwork
through occupational centres to more remunerative, though still sheltered, employment
under Remploy and similar schemes. (Sheltered employment means work for which a
wage is paid but not at competitive market rates).
Ideally, of course, rehabilitation of the handicapped in relation to employment
should aim at re-training the man for a job which is within his new limited powers.
The victims of war injuries or industrial accidents can more easily be re-trained than
those disabled by chronic or progressive disease because the nature and degree of the
disability can be assessed. The assessment may be made at medical rehabilitation units
in the larger hospitals, from which the patients can go on to the Ministry of Labour
training schemes.
The handicapped— to go back to the Act's definition of them as "those substantially
or permanently handicapped by illness, disease or congenital abnormality"— are dealt
with by a wide variety of statutory and voluntary agencies. A wide net spreads over the
country, closely woven in the intricacies of its arrangements for handicapped children,
and for adults who can still work, but only a loose mesh of as yet unrelated threads for
severely handicapped or immobile adults. It is for these more unfortunate people that
we must now complete the web, so that they too can be given as much opportunity as
possible to live a full and useful life."
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