Grieving The Few Job Opportunities For Adults With Intellectual Disabilities

By Edna Booker


If you have intellectual disabilities, you most probably face big challenges due to your conditions. These include having difficulties supporting yourself through a sufficiently paying job. Our government spends billions through programs aimed at getting adults with intellectual disabilities into the workforce. However, the United States sees over half such adults currently working or unsuccessfully searching for jobs.

The SSA or Social Security Administration programs benefit intellectually challenged people. These are those impaired in cognitive or communicative functions, those with low levels of IQ and those with serious impairments in social or personal functions. Administration in Social Security programs provide vital lifelines to such people.

In the event a person has intellectual disabilities and has difficulty gaining access to Social Security Administration benefits, a Portsmouth VA disability rights lawyer can give assistance in pursuing their claims. Such an attorney can help with the initial application or in making an appeal against a termination or denial of disability benefits.

Recent research has it that only forty-four percent of the adults with cerebral infirmities are in the labour force, either seeking employment or working. An even smaller number, thirty-four percent have actual jobs currently. This a lot lower than the seventy-three percent able working adults within the workforce. Twenty-eight percent of working age adults defined as disabled have never held a job entirely.

It is natural to expect that only a few intellectually challenged people have jobs compared to normal people. However, the troubling dilemma of these figures arises from the little progress attained in getting the disabled into employment. This is despite the government huge expenditure. Studies reveal that the percentage of intellectually challenged adults in the workforce has remained stagnant for four decades.

The term disabled is broad in defining the types of these disabilities in people in the workplace. It usually identifies people with a seventy-five IQ or lower. It defines people having limited basic life abilities such as handling money. It identifies people afflicted by such mind maladies as autism and Down syndrome.

Given a chance, adults with mind challenges may perform certain jobs well. Research has shown sixty-two percent of the disabled working in competitive environments have been working for longer than three years. This means that if more efforts were directed towards getting disabled adults employed, they would contribute towards their self-support or dependence reduction. Expecting low performances from intellectually disabled persons is a problem needing address. These employees usually face segregation in their workplaces. This denies them progress opportunities while making it hard for them attain new skills. These obstacles must be seriously addressed.

Up until more adults afflicted with intellectual disabilities can be able to get into gainful employment, they will continue in dependence of Social Security Disability programs for financial support. The benefits may be enough to support most of the mature individuals. However, the benefits has limitations because of state maximums and past income.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment