Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

28

1 Secretary, but not exceeding $100 per day, including travel 2 time, and while so serving away from their homes or regu3 lar places of business they may be allowed travel expenses, 4 including per diem in lieu of subsistence, as authorized by.sec5 tion 5 of the Administrative Expenses Act of 1946 (5 U.S.C. 6 73b-2) for persons in the Government service employed 7 intermittently."

The CHAIRMAN. We will be happy to hear from you now, Secretary Cohen. You may proceed in any manner that you wish.

Mr. COHEN. I would like to read the statement first, and then Miss Switzer will go into more detail, more specifics on the legislation. The CHAIRMAN. All right, sir.

STATEMENT OF WILBUR J. COHEN, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR LEGISLATION; ACCOMPANIED BY MISS MARY E. SWITZER, COMMISSIONER OF VOCATIONAL REHABILITATION; RUSSELL J. N. DEAN, ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER, LEGISLATION AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS; JOSEPH HUNT, ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER, PROGRAM SERVICES; MRS. EMILY M. LAMBORN, DEPUTY ASSISTANT COMMISIONER, PROGRAM SERVICES; AND SAMUEL MARTZ, ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER, MANAGEMENT SERVICES, VOCATIONAL REHABILITATION ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, it is always a pleasure, Mr. Chairman, to come before you and your Subcommittee on Health, because this subcommittee has introduced so much health legislation in the past years.

I am especially delighted to come before you today because I know that this is going to be a landmark year in the passage of very, very important legislation, of which this bill you have before you this morning is a case, and a part of our total picture.

President Johnson said, in his health message on January 7 of this year:

I believe we have come to a rare moment of opportunity and challenge in the evolution of our society ***. Whatever we aspire to do together, our success in those enterprises-and our enjoyment of the fruits that result-will rest finally upon the health of our people ***. We are already behind our capability and our potential. Further delay will only compound our problems and deny our people the health and happiness that could be theirs.

In that message, the President recommended legislation to make major improvements and expansion in the vocational rehabilitation program to restore disabled people to employment. He pointed out that we are rehabilitating about 120,000 disabled persons each year and that our goal should be at least 200,000 a year, and we should try to reach that goal as soon as possible.

Mr. Chairman, the bill before this committee, S. 1525, carries out the President's recommendations. It is a very important bill in the administration's total health program. The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare has given this bill high priority and I hope this subcommittee will find it possible to do the same.

This bill is designed to achieve another great step forward for the millions of American citizens who today live on the fringes of our society because they are the victims of a disability. Most of these men and women can be restored through modern rehabilitation programs. There are several proposals in this bill which I wish to refer to briefly before Miss Switzer discusses the bill with you in more detail. One of the important proposals in S. 1525 is to amend the Vocational Rehabilitation Act to help State vocational rehabilitation agencies increase the services they give to our more severely disabled

people. As the present law operates, the State agency is expected, after a diagnostic workup, to determine whether or not the disabled person will be employable when and if a program of vocational rehabilitation services is carried out. Many disabled people have such severe handicaps, or have so many complications surrounding their disability, that this kind of prediction is impossible. The bill would authorize State rehabilitation agencies to accept severely disabled people, where the eventual outcome is not initially clear, and provide rehabilitation services to them up to 6 months. During this time the person's response to services could be observed and the State agency then could decide whether or not, with further services, the disabled individual might become employable. This proposal will make a long-needed change in a public program which increasingly faces more and more problems of severe disability.

Another obvious need which would be met by this bill is the proposal for the construction of rehabilitation facilities and workshops. For the last several years, the rehabilitation efforts of both public and voluntary agencies have been aided by the rehabilitation facilities provision of the Hill-Burton Hospital Survey and Construction Act. This has been an extremely valuable part of the growth of rehabilitation facilities in the United States. However, quite naturally, it has been directed primarily to meeting the needs for medical types of facilities as components of hospitals and medical centers. There has remained a continuing and largely unmet need for vocational types of rehabilitation centers and for modern workshops.

If this proposal is enacted, as I hope it will, to permit communities across the country to meet their urgent need for these special institutions, aimed at vocational preparation for employment, we will close one of the remaining gaps in our arsenal of rehabilitation resources. This emphasis upon the vocational aspects of rehabilitation processes is reflected also in the proposals in this bill for improvement of workshops. As public and private agencies increase the number of severly disabled people being served, the need for modern workshops, both as training resources and as places of employment, grows rapidly. At the same time there is a need to aid many workshops in improving and modernizing their professional services and particularly to strengthen the training they provide for handicapped people.

As essential supporting steps for workshop improvement, a National Policy and Performance Council would be established, a system would be developed for providing expert technical assistance at the request of workshops; and there would be available project grants to help workshops strengthen and improve their operations.

Through an amendment to section 4 of the Vocational Rehabilitation Act, project grants would be available to State agencies and nonprofit groups for the specific purpose of helping to increase the number of disabled people rehabilitated. This takes advantage of experience gained in a temporary expansion grant program which was carried out for 3 years after the enactment of the 1954 law.

S. 1525 would authorize grants for 2 years to assist the State agencies in carrying out statewide planning for the resources required to meet the rehabilitation needs of disabled people. This planning, in cooperation with the many public and private groups and institutions involved in vocational rehabilitation, has a clear focus-the organization and development of statewide resources which will permit the States to serve all the disabled people who need help by 1975.

I would like to say, Mr. Chairman, that I consider this particular amendment here of great importance, because it leads towards the achievement of something that I think we all aspire to-seeing to it that in the foreseeable future, all of the States will be able to serve all of the disabled people. It is a plan toward that time when we will have the resources and the facilities and the manpower that are needed to carry out that laudable objective.

I wish to mention also another important feature of S. 1525. The marked success of the research and demonstration grant program of the Vocational Rehabilitation Administration has been a vital factor in the overall growth we have seen in rehabilitation service programs during the last 10 years.

Out of this experience has come a realization that there are situations in which research carried on intramurally by the Vocational Rehabilitation Administration is essential to meet well-defined needs. This is not envisioned as a large intramural research program, but rather as a modest and selective effort which will permit the agency to respond to research needs which cannot be met through other

means.

S. 1525 also proposes the creation of a central data system as a service to all segments of the rehabilitation community in this country. This amendment recognizes what is happening all around us everywhere in science, industry, commerce, and government-the need for modern automated data systems which can bring under control the great volume of data which flows from expanded research efforts and other activities. By combining in a central operation our research findings, State agency data, specialized information on prosthetic appliances, on rehabilitation facilities and workshops, and other essential data, this service will permit a highly efficient operation which will be a valuable aid to the entire Nation. These will be discussed in more detail by Miss Mary E. Switzer, the very able Commissioner of Vocational Rehabilitation, whose close association with the vocational rehabilitation program and whose leadership of our whole public effort in this area is well known to all of you.

I thank the chairman and each member of this committee for all they have done to advance rehabilitation in the United States and for its outstanding record in advancing the health of the American people. There has been no substantive improvement in the basic rehabilitation act since 1954 11 years ago. A great deal of progress has been made in those 11 years in our knowledge of how to deal with this problem. We have invested a great deal in manpower and facilities. We have renewed national commitments as to the importance of the vocational rehabilitation program, and I think it is ample time now, 11 years later, that we make another gigantic step forward in improving this program which is to important.

I wish to observe that this bill, taken together with such legislation as H.R. 6675, the Social Security Amendments of 1965, now pending in the other body, which improves our disability insurance and disability assistance program, represents an expression of President Johnson's determination that the concept of a Great Society will have reality and meaning for every disabled American.

All of these taken together, I think, will make 1965 an important year in helping to meet more effectively the needs of the disabled people and at the same time represents an expression of President

Johnson's determination, which I am sure you heartily concur in that the concept of a Great Society must and will have reality and meaning for every disabled American in our society. And on behalf of the administration and the Department I urge favorable consideration and prompt enactment of S. 1525.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you for your very fine statement, Mr. Secretary. Could you give us some estimate of the cost of this bill? Mr. COHEN. I will be glad to submit for the record those estimates of the 5-year cost.

The CHAIRMAN. Will you submit those for the record? If so, we will appreciate it.

Mr. COHEN. I will be very happy to do so.

The CHAIRMAN. All right. Miss Switzer, we will be happy to hear from you now.

STATEMENT OF MISS MARY E. SWITZER, COMMISSIONER OF VOCATIONAL REHABILITATION, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE

Miss SWITZER. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I would underline what Assistant Secretary Cohen has said about our sense of gratitude for the confidence that his committee has placed in us and especially you, Senator Hill, in the wonderful support you have always given to our program and to me personally every time we have come before you for advice and counsel, both in this committee and in the Committee on Appropriations.

I would like to have the committee consider these proposels that comprise S. 1525 against the backdrop of what I feel is an important principle to remember in the public program of vocational rehabilitation.

The ultimate objective of every proposal in this legislation is to create better opportunities for the disabled people of this Nation to live actively and usefully as fully participating citizens of our communities and our country. This is our constituency-the disabled of America who want to work and who, by the combination of services we call vocational rehabilitation, can work. A majority can be placed in full-time competivive employment. Many need the sheltered environment of a workshop for an extended period before entering the labor market. A further group will need part-time work arrangements, often in special workshops. Some may only be able to work a few hours a day, such as the older handicapped worker or the victims of cerebral palsy, the severely mentally retarded, or the stroke patient.

In our society, work of some kind, preferably at a task congenial to the individual, is essential to mental and often to physical health, even of handicapped people, and certainly to a sense of security and participation in our democracy. We have discovered, to our sorrow, that young people-able bodied and handicapped alike denied the opportunity to earn their way in the world, become pools of discontent and frustration and take out this frustration on the community where they live in dozens of destructive and often criminal ways.

Our conception of what can be done to provide the opportunities for our disabled people has broadened greatly since the first vocational rehabilitation program was established in 1920, both in terms of the

« ÎnapoiContinuă »