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to vocational training of the handicapped so that when they leave school they are not
only below the educational standard of their normal competitors for employment but
they have no alternative vocational skill which they can flaunt in the face of the opposition.
An excellent example is the teaching of shorthand and typing to intelligent physically
handicapped children, but in very few special schools are there adequate provisions
although this is an accepted part of secondary (modern) education.
In Dagenham, the special school teaches boot repairing to the boys with the result
that almost all the less intelligent physically handicapped and the educationally subnormal
boys want to be boot repairers so the industry locally is saturated and the standards
and conditions of employment cannot be improved because there is no shortage of labour.
For example, one boy with a T.B. hip and severe contractures who had missed a lot of
schooling and was therefore below average in attainment but very good at cobbling, is
employed in a local small boot repair shop where the conditions of work are quite unsuitable.
The benches necessitate standing all day and there are no facilities for a rest at
any time during the over-long hours at work.
The manual skill of many of the children from special schools, whether they are
educationally subnormal or physically handicapped, is great enough for them to be
trained for one or two years after school and so overcome the difficult years between
school and open employment, but the Ministry of Labour will not accept a school leaver
for training unless a job can be guaranteed for him at the end of his training. This
requires an act of faith on the part of local employers and means that the youth employment
officer and the school must be completely certain of success—thus excluding many
potentially suitable children who have not yet proved themselves in the narrower field of
school activities.
So far, I have considered only the children who, with or without training, will be
able to be employed in open industry—but in periods of unemployment the number of
these children from special schools decreases and it is all the more necessary to provide
for their employment and training in the type of workshops set up by Remploy.
All forms of sheltered employment, meaning work for which a wage is paid but not
at competitive market rates, to be wide enough in scope to offer a range of work must
be heavily subsidised, and the provision of a complete national network of factories and
training establishments for handicapped people is a matter for urgent legislation as part
of the social services. If such training establishments and/or sheltered workshops were
provided in adequate numbers many of the school leavers who need only a few more
years of supervision and training could pass through this phase of assisted, subsidised
employment and enter open industry at a later age, equipped with a special skill in one
field.
A further difficulty in the second group—those requiring training or sheltered
employment—is found; the reluctance of disablement resettlement officers to accept a
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