Neighborhood Youth Corps programs be expanded and new grant programs be made available through the Departments of Labor and Health, Education, and Welfare to recruit, train and place supportive workers such as teacher aides, nurse's aides, social casework and family service aides, and attendants in mental retardation services. These grants should be administered primarily as work training and employment grants and should be made particularly available to low income applicants The place of training and employment should preferably be clinics, schools (including public school special education classes) and centers serving the needs of the retarded in the trainee's neighborhood 3. We recommend a sustained effort on the part of all agencies operating programs for the retarded and other handicapped to attract into work with the retarded those qualified workers who may need only refresher training or slight retraining to return to work in service professions. A great potential in this area exists in nurses. therapists, teachers and other professionals who are not working during their family-raising years. 4. To expand mental retardation services with existing and potential manpower resources, we recommend that professional groups recognize and extend professional acceptance to supportive personnel who work with their members. We also recommend that professional specialists and their associations evaluate specialists' functions with a view to transferring as many of those functions as possible to trained supportive workers. We further recommend that professional groups reassess in light of the preceding any restrictions which they now place on the use of nonprofessional support personnel and reduce those restrictions to a minimum. We urge in this connection also that higher edu cation institutions review curricula to assure that courses reflect current thought on specialist and supportive statt duties and responsibilities in services for the retarded 5. To improve utilization of adult and youth volun reers and to develop volunteer service as a major mental retardation manpower resource, we recommend that a Department of Health, Education, and Welfare grant program be made available to each state to set up, expand or modify a volunteer |