VOCATIONAL REHABILITATION SERVICES TO THE HANDICAPPED WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1972 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON EDUCATION, Washington, D.C. The Select Subcommittee met at 1 p.m., pursuant to recess, in room 2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John Brademas (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Committee members present: Representatives Perkins, Brademas, Scheuer, Mazzoli, Quie, Reid, and Peyser. Staff members present: Jack G. Duncan, counsel, and Martin L. La Vor, minority legislative coordinator. Mr. BRADEMAS. The Select Subcommittee on Education will come to order to hold its third day of hearings on legislation providing vocational rehabilitation services to disabled persons. Because the Vocational Rehabilitation Act expires in 5 months, this subcommittee has been hearing proposed legislation that would extend and expand the Vocational Rehabilitation Act. Today we are very pleased to have with us the distinguished Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Hon. Elliot Richardson. On the occasion of today's testimony by administration officials, I am sure that they and the other members of this subcommittee join me in expressing our sense of loss at the absence of the late Mary Switzer, former Commissioner of vocational rehabilitation programs, who dedicated her life to serving handicapped and disadvantaged persons. As a highly respected Federal civil servant for nearly 50 years, Miss Switzer served under the appointment of eight Presidents and often testified before this committee. During the span of her service of the half century which has elapsed since the Vocational Rehabilitation Act was signed into law, this program has been marked by expansion and improvement. In particular, the Vocational Rehabilitation Amendments of 1965 and 1968 have considerably broadened the concept of rehabilitation services. Proposals we are now considering represent further efforts to add progressive steps to the existing vocational rehabilitation program. As more and more persons become eligible for vocational rehabilitation services, we must face up to the responsibility of providing effective service for these individuals. Present estimates are that between 7 to 10 million people require vocational rehabilitation services and that 500,000 new cases annually are added. The impact of these figures is especially touching when we stop to consider the worth of rehabilitation insofar as the individual is concerned. Not only does rehabilitation afford a sense of independence and dignity to the individual, but also has a favorable effect on his own economic status and that of the Nation. It is my understanding that, for each $6,000 spent by Federal and State agencies on the vocational rehabilitation of disabled citizens, there is an increase of over $35,000 in the rehabilitated person's lifetime earnings. Without further delay, the Chair and members of the subcommittee welcome the opportunity at long last to hear what the administration has outlined in order to benefit the disabled citizens of our society. It is a very great pleasure to present the distinguished Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Mr. Richardson, who I understand is accompanied by Assistant Secretary Stephen Kurzman; Mr. John D. Twiname, Administrator of the Social and Rehabilitation Service; and Mr. Edward Newman, the Commissioner of the Rehabilitation Services Administration. Mr. Secretary, we are very pleased to have you with us today. STATEMENT OF HON. ELLIOT RICHARDSON, SECRETARY OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE, ACCOMPANIED BY JOHN D. TWINAME, ADMINISTRATOR, SOCIAL AND REHABILITATION SERVICE; EDWARD NEWMAN, COMMISSIONER, REHABILITATION SERVICES ADMINISTRATION; AND STEPHEN KURZMAN, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR LEGISLATION, OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY Secretary RICHARDSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, it is always a pleasure to come before you and your Select Subcommittee on Education because this committee has generated so much constructive legislation over the years. I refer particularly to your work on legislation benefitting the handicapped-vocational rehabilitation, educational services for handicapped children, and vocational education, all closely tied in with vocational rehabilitation services in many States. I recall with considerable pleasure, Mr. Chairman, my experience during the 1950s as Assistant Secretary for Legislation in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in dealing with Chairman Perkins and other outstanding legislators. As you just noted, Mr. Chairman, we do share with you the sense of deep loss in not having Mary Switzer with us this year. We have all, you, as well as we on this side of the table, shared the experience of having worked with Mary E. Switzer, who valued highly the leadership of your committee in the evolution of the vocational rehabilitation program, from its inception as a modest back-to-work program more than half a century ago, to its present eminence among the human resources and manpower development programs of today. I like to think that the rehabilitation program exemplifies and expresses the predominant qualities which Miss Switzer brought to the administration of the program, a program with a heart, in that it brings compassionate help to people who need it. This is a program that does not sentimentalize the disabled or the disability, but emphasizes using the remaining physical, emotional and mental assets of the disabled person in picking up the threads of his life and helping him to achieve his own return to productive and satisfying living. I know that Miss Switzer would want us to join forces in the further bold development of the legislation to extend the vocational rehabilitation program, so vital in helping disabled people obtain and use the services they need to help them help themselves. And this is the purpose of my presence here today. Mr. BRADEMAS. Mr. Secretary, I might interrupt you to observe that both the distinguished ranking minority member of the subcommittee, Mr. Reid, and I have introduced legislation, the effect of which would be to provide that the HEW South Building be named the Mary Switzer Memorial Building. I don't know if it is possible to effect that kind of recommendation administratively, but I know neither of us would be distressed if you moved in that direction. This would be one of the few areas in which I would be delighted to see a greater exercise of administrative discretion. Secretary RICHARDSON. Well, we certainly will stretch to whatever limit we can the administrative authority we might have to do it. I think that is a very fine suggestion and I am sure that my colleagues here at this table would be glad to join with me in seeking to accomplish it. I might add, Mr. Chairman, that Mary Switzer was, in a very real sense, my own principal teacher in the period of my earlier service with HEW and certainly she had a vitality of spirit as well as a wisdom in working within the complex process of Government toward broad compassionate ends that I think were matched by no one in my experience. PENDING BILLS There are many possible ways to modify this program. Bills have been introduced by different Members of the Congress who have developed proposals which emphasize particular facets of the overall program for vocational rehabilitation services. I refer particularly to H.R. 8395, Chairman Perkins' bill, which contains a creative reorganization of the current authorities in the law. It also contains additional categorical authority extending the program into new areas of service, such as preventive services to the blind and the deaf. I refer, also to your bill, Mr. Chairman, H.R. 9847, which emphasizes the needs of the severely impaired by requiring priority attention to their needs, and includes the establishment of a special organizational unit and a national advisory body within the Department for maintaining emphasis on the severely disabled. Identical bills by Mr. Perkins and Mr. Yatron (H.R. 7949 and 7526) would provide greater Federal incentives for provision of services directed toward the older blind person whose rehabilitation and employment needs are doubly complicated by disability and age. Many recommendations and ideas to help these individuals developed from the series of local and State meetings which culminated in the recent White House Conference on aging. The President will be advancing to the Congress within the next months a series of rehommendations. Before commenting specifically on these proposals, I would like to present a view of the present program and its potentialities in relation to other administration initiatives, including the Allied Services Act, to be introduced shortly, and welfare reform. ADMINISTRATION HUMAN RESOURCES STRATEGY Our plan is to bring together a number of the existing human resources programs, including vocational rehabilitation, so that improved, more comprehensive, less expensive services are available. To achieve the goals of all human resource programs-reduction of dependency and prevention of the conditions that foster such dependency the administration will shortly introduce legislation to enable State and local governments to forge appropriate program relationships between HEW human service programs at State and community levels. This legislation, the Allied Services Act, was referred to in the President's state of the Union address. It is appropriate that the Allied Services Act should be discussed at this hearing since it is modeled on the method of service delivery which has proven so successful in the vocational rehabilitation program. When a vocational rehabilitation client enters the program, his total needs relative to attaining economic and social independence are assessed. His vocational rehabilitation counselor then marshals the appropriate range of health, education or social services necessary to achieve these objectives. The vocational rehabilitation program model truly involves an effective alliance of services to meet the needs of its clients. The Allied Services Act would provide the authority to offer assistance and incentives to State and local governments to enable them to plan and implement a coordinated human service program. Under such a program a client would receive the appropriate range of available services necessary to meet his and his family's needs. The act would provide assistance for the development of a joint State and community plan to coordinate the provision of, for example, health services, vocational rehabilitation services, services to the aged, and such education services as adult basic education. It would encourage joint action by all human service providers. It would also authorize secretarial waivers of technical and administrative impediments to join services efforts and permit, on a limited basis, States and localities to transfer funds between related programs where the transfers are necessary to the implementation of a comprehensive and coordinated service program. Many members of this committee will recall hearings in which various agencies of government at all levels and hundreds of interested and competent witnesses from outside government have spoken to the need for expanding services, pushing beyond present categorical constraints of existing programs. This has been a constant refrain, whether testimony was about handicapped children, disabled adults, mentally impaired adults, educationally deprived disadvantaged youngsters or some other vulnerable sector of the population. The Allied Services Act would be an important step in this direction. Under the President's welfare reform initiatives the State vocational rehabilitation program will work with welfare families when the primary wage earner is disabled and is, therefore, excused from registration for training and/or work. These families have as much right as the nondisabled to full and direct attention to their specific economic and employment problems. They will be given full vocational rehabilitation services if need be, in the effort to return them to productive employment. The Housepassed welfare reform bill, H.R. 1, also includes a responsibility assigned to the State-Federal vocational rehabilitation program for determining and certifying the disability of those individuals who are to be aided through the federally administered program of assistance to the disabled, blind, and aged. The administration amendments to the Vocational Rehabilitation Act, which are presently being coordinated in the executive branch, will modify, extend, and improve the delivery of these and other services to individuals and families. However, I want to emphasize that while we hope to reorder some of the administrative and program relationships that exist between vocational rehabilitation and health and social services under other legislation, we have no intention of watering down or redirecting the benefits of this program away from disabled people. We think the rehabilitation approach has much to offer when applied, for example, to the problems of nondisabled people who are out of work and in need of work counseling and adjustment services. One of our priorities is to serve progressively greater numbers of disabled public assistance clients in the vocational rehabilitation program. During the past year, for example, the program served 146,000 of these dependent people and rehabilitated and sent back to work 40,321. Our goal for the next years ahead is even more ambitious, but it will not be sought at the expense of severely disabled people of modest incomes who have traditionally turned to this disability program for counseling and other help in getting back to work and more effective living. PARTICULAR GROUPS OF THE DISABLED A number of bills (for example, H. R. 9847, introduced by Congressman Brademas; and H.R. 7949 and H.R. 7526, introduced by Congressmen Perkins and Yatron) pending before the committee propose premium Federal funding for the severaly disabled or other groups such as older blind people. I am sympathetic to the motivations behind such proposals. My thought at present is that we should not discriminate in Federal funding for or against one group or another in this general legislation which is designed for all disabled people. The Federal Government is now paying 80 percent of the cost of vocational rehabilitation services for all groups in the basic support program that funnels money into the major vocational rehabilitation services programs of the States. It is also my belief that 80 percent Federal/20 percent State funding is a fair sharing of the financial burden pending the completion of congressional action on the President's proposals on welfare reform. As you know, H.R. 1 provides that some families with disabled heads of household or household members will be served at the highest premium rate (100 percent) along with the nondisabled in other portions of the welfare program. |