Morning Call, April 11, 2010, Sunday

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Morning Call (Allentown, Pennsylvania)

April 11, 2010, Sunday

Ready, willing and disabled; Shifting of jobs overseas, recession make work scarce for handicapped.

Cameron Bell sits on the side of his bed, rubbing sleep from his eyes and ignoring the alarm clock's six, seven, eight electronic chirps that started at 6:20 a.m.

"Cam, I literally don't know how to turn off your alarm," Theo Bell says quietly to his son.

Cameron switches it off and his dad leaves the room.

Fifteen minutes later, Theo Bell departs their Bethlehem Township home for his corporate marketing job in New Jersey. Cameron, 21, who has Down syndrome and an IQ of 49, is on his own.

That's OK. He has a routine.

Cameron dresses in the blue T-shirt, blue jeans and gray sneakers he laid out the night before. He makes his bed, complete with two teddy bears and a Pop-Tart bean-bag pillow. He pours himself Apple Jacks; he's not allowed to touch the stove, toaster or microwave to make something warm.

At 6:52 a.m., Cameron zips his jacket, grabs his book bag and stands by the front door, silent and watchful for the bus that will take him to class and his $7.25 hourly job at Liberty High School. Twelve minutes later it arrives. He boards.

This has been Cameron's morning for seven years. In two months, it will end.
Cameron has reached the maximum schooling age for special education students, forcing them to leave the safety net that is the Bethlehem Area School District. His minimum-wage job will shift to another student. His family will have to navigate myriad social programs to help him find new employment that will allow him to keep the dignity he feels when he cashes his paychecks.

"If he's not working, that bedroom becomes the prison for him," Theo Bell said.
But the shifting of low-skill production jobs overseas and the Great Recession have decimated job prospects for the disabled, who traditionally have a lower employment rate than the general population.

"It's a struggle," said Marcie Hrycyszyn, Cameron's teacher and the district's school-to-work coordinator. "Mail-room jobs were always plentiful for my students. But they are now being taken by people who have been laid off or college grads."

By law, schools must plan and record academic, social and job skill lessons for each special education student. That level of personalized schooling can begin as early as 3. When students like Cameron hit 14, the emphasis shifts from academics to job skills that suit their mental and
physical capabilities.

Cameron has been trained to do low-level janitorial, office and cafeteria work at various schools. When he's doing his 21/2-hour shift at Liberty, he shreds office paper, breaks down cardboard boxes and clears cafeteria trays.

"Cameron is a worker," Hrycyszyn said.

Come June, he will enter the work force where there are no job guarantees despite the employment assistance his father will seek from government and social service agencies like the state Office of Vocational Rehabilitation, Via of the Lehigh Valley or the Private Industry Council.

Just how many disabled adults are working is unknown, as many fall through the cracks. Also, there is no one definition of "disability" in the realms of government and social service work.

Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., tries to track the numbers. Cornell's Employment and Disability Institute records how many disabled people, ages 21-64, are working -- as opposed to being unemployed -- in its annual "Progress Report on the Economic Well-Being of Working-Age People with Disabilities."

The report shows the disabled's employment has declined every year since 1989's high of 28.8 percent. The drop has been steepest since 2000, plunging 30.2 percent to 16.8 percent in 2009.
By comparison, the employment rate for those without disabilities has gone up and down. It hit a high of 81.7 per-cent in 2000 and had dropped 6.4 percent by last year.

Most likely, Cornell researcher Bill Erickson said, the downward trend will continue for both groups.

Officials who work with the Lehigh Valley area's special needs population are feeling the economic impact.

Nancy Johnson, program manager at Private Industry Council, said the employment arena for the disabled was getting worse before the recession took hold in 2007. She said many of PIC's disabled clients, especially if they are older, cannot stand for long. Production jobs that allowed employees to sit while packaging consumer goods started moving overseas around 2003.

"Those jobs are almost impossible to find these days," Johnson said.

Hrycyszyn said the recession has made it worse. While she has a steady crop of restaurants and offices that accept special education students for work-study positions or future employment, she struck out this year when asking 86 new places to help with off-site training and jobs.
Pete Rile has had the same experience as job-placement coordinator for Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit 21. "We are having a terrible time right now because many more people are looking for jobs," Rile said.

Federal stimulus money totaling $23 million will be flowing through the state Department of Labor and Industry's Office of Vocational Rehabilitation to try to create jobs for the special needs population. An unknown amount of grant money will be flowing to businesses in the Lehigh Valley and Poconos to help offset job training costs or the purchase of new equipment if they hire disabled workers, said Rick Walters, OVR's district administrator in Allentown.

Via is also trying to boost job prospects. Spokeswoman Lisa Walkiewicz said the agency is recruiting business leaders to petition corporations in the Valley to hire the disabled.

Without new avenues of employment for 21-year-old disabled students leaving school, Walkiewicz said, the emo-tional and economic strain on families will increase.

"When they are in school, there is a routine in place," she said. "They have a place to go and they are meeting people. If that changes dramatically, drastically, what happens to the whole family?"

Cameron, although jobless now, is lucky. He has a strong family network to help, unlike many other disabled adults, 28 percent of whom end up in poverty, the Cornell study said.

Theo Bell already has begun the employment process for his son with the state OVR. The government, however, may not be able to help. So Theo Bell leans on his Jehovah's Witness faith when he wakes in the dead of night, worried about his son's future. He turns to his own organizational skills as a corporate vice president to make sure Cameron's summer is scheduled around Special Olympics competition and Easter Seals camp.

But Theo Bell knows social activities cannot fill his son's future.

"He's not one to play all day," Bell said.

He's a worker. Has been since birth.

After he was born in 1988 with two holes in his heart, doctors didn't think he'd live and they gave his parents the option of institutionalizing him. They took him home instead. The holes in his heart sealed themselves, leaving him with a murmur.

Doctors said he wouldn't walk, swim or read. He can do all three, and hit a jump shot. He eats healthily under the tutelage of his stepmom, Alicia Bell. He likes to watch movies with his younger sister, Marissa, and attend high school basketball games with his older brother, Marques.

When he's at home, he talks about getting his own apartment. When he's at Liberty, he works intensely and hard.

"I'm a good boy," Cameron said.

Who needs a job.