Sheltered Workshops Offer Little Benefit, Studies Find
Source: Disability Scoop
Sheltered workshops are significantly more costly, yet no more effective than supported, competitive employment at ensuring job prospects for individuals with disabilities, new research suggests.
Two new studies — one focusing on adults with autism and the other looking at individuals with cognitive disabilities — compared the outcomes of those who started out in sheltered employment with those who did not.
Segregated work environments are intended to teach those with disabilities job skills so that they can later move into positions with mainstream employers, supporters of the programs say. But the findings of both studies are sharply calling this premise into question.
In both cases, researchers found that people who spent time in sheltered workshops were no more likely to be employed, but earned less and were more costly to support than their peers who did not start out in segregated environments.
