February 18, 1969
Page 3800
SERVICE FOR THE HANDICAPPED
HON. EDMUND S. MUSKIE OF MAINE IN THE SENATE CF THE UNITED STATES Tuesday, February 18, 1969
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, the Maine Commission on Rehabilitation Needs met with the Governor's Conference in Augusta, Maine, on October 29, 1968, to present the results of its study on rehabilitative needs in our State and to submit plans to meet the needs through legislation.
Its recommendation to create a separate bureau of rehabilitation services within the Maine Department of Health and Welfare to organize all health, social, and rehabilitative services – correctional and vocational – in a single organizational structure is receiving Governor Curtis' consideration. With adequate funds, the bureau would have the ability to mobilize resources and conduct programs throughout the State to meet the needs of the handicapped of all ages so that they might have the opportunity to live fruitful, productive lives.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the creed of the Maine Commission on Rehabilitative Needs by the chairman of the commission, Mr. Leonard W. Mayo; the remarks by Gov. Kenneth M. Curtis; and the remarks by State Senator Bennett D. Katz, be printed in the Extensions of Remarks.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
A CREED FOR THOSE WHO BELIEVE IN THE HANDICAPPED
(By Leonard W. Mayo, Chairman, Maine Commission on Rehabilitation Needs)
1. We believe in the American promise of equality of opportunity for all people, regardless of nationality, cultural, or ethnic background, race, religion, or geographical location.
2. We believe that every country, city, town, village, and plantation, and every individual in the state of Maine has an obligation to help bring to fruition in this generation the ideal of a full and useful life for every handicapped person in the State.
3. We believe that this is only possible via effective team work, wise planning, the efficient expenditure of additional public and private funds, and the development of a network of resources and services as set forth in the recommendations of the Commission on Rehabilitation Needs.
4. We believe in the interest, the concern, and the basic compassion of our fellow citizens when human needs are brought to their attention and in their ultimate response to the challenge of rehabilitation as part of the American dream.
We believe that the vast majority of our people want to replace violence with peaceful solutions, injustice with justice, indecencies with decency, rejection with acceptance, dependency with independence, and hence, disability, physical, mental, or social, with the opportunity for rehabilitation.
5. Finally, we believe in the handicapped person himself and in his capacity for development so frequently limited by our lack of imagination and neglect; we believe in his passion for freedom and independence that can be his only when those upon whom he must rely for education, training, guidance, and employment, do not fail him, but become articulate, dynamic, and effective partners in his determined struggle to help himself.
These things we believe, and believing, we pledge our hearts, our hands, our funds, and our full cooperation to the end that they shall be carried out.
THE GOVERNOR'S REPLY (By Gov. Kenneth M. Curtis)
Thank you, Dr. Mayo, distinguished visitors and friends of rehabilitation.
It is truly a great pleasure to greet all of you who have come today to help launch this most important phase of our statewide planning for rehabilitation.
Many of you I know personally. I am acquainted with the important work you are doing in medicine, psychology, education, social work, industry, communications, employment and vocational rehabilitation.
Many of you are conducting programs that mobilize the resources of your communities to reach disabled persons of all ages and help them achieve their full potential.
Equally important, you are combating a host of social ills such as schools that are poorly equipped and staffed to meet the social and emotional needs of children, especially the children of the very poor.
I want to express appreciation to all those who have made substantial contributions to this 20-month study – a study which has discussed and publicized for the first time our State's specific needs for total rehabilitation services, and has proposed equally specific ways to meet these needs.
Thirty-two commission members, 105 members of the six regional task forces, many members of special study committees, and scores of other persons have contributed their time and knowledge to this great effort.
The project staff, Dr. Peter Doran and Larry Lapointe, deserve special thanks, as do the hard- working members of the executive committee.
My principal goal, as Governor, is to develop this State's vast and still largely untapped natural and human resources.
We have learned from bitter experience that we can no longer afford to waste our natural resources.
We know that like our land itself, every individual has hidden resources which we must explore and develop.
But there are formidable obstacles to overcome in meeting this goal.
For example, the commission's study has revealed that approximately 52,000 persons are eligible for vocational rehabilitation services.
Yet the two major vocational rehabilitation agencies – the division of vocational rehabilitation and the division of eye care and special services, can extend services to only about 3,000 persons annually.
We know also that there are more than 16,000 young people in Maine between the ages of 5 and 18 who are so emotionally or psychologically disturbed that they are in serious need of professional help.
Yet very few of them, especially those in the public schools, receive that help.
These statistics document a pressing need for greatly expanded rehabilitation services. The twenty major recommendations set forth by your commission provide many of the keys, I believe, to such a quality program of expanding services in this State.
These recommendations reflect the just principle that every disabled person is entitled to an equal chance to develop and use his considerable abilities.
Let me now discuss with you some actions that I have taken or propose to take in this area.
I have asked Commissioners Dean Fisher and William Logan to help prepare legislation to create a separate bureau of rehabilitation services in the department of health and welfare.
Creation of such a bureau has the value of organizing all health, social and rehabilitation services within a single organizational structure.
There is every expectation that this will improve the coordination of these services and provide a stronger and more visible unit.
It will also improve services to clients by bringing together these services within a single agency and improving referral and record keeping practices.
The new bureau should be part of the legislature's business when it convenes in January.
In correctional rehabilitation, another major concern of the commission, important steps have already been taken to bring vocational rehabilitation services, administered cooperatively by the Bureau of Corrections and the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, to all correctional institutions in the state.
In addition, an effective program has been developed cooperatively by the Division and the Bureau of Mental Health at the Bliss Center in Pineland.
Similar vocational rehabilitation service should be provided at our mental, community and general hospitals, and I hope that this too can be accomplished in the coming year.
The needs of handicapped children must be given a prominent place in our planning. Just as we have vocational rehabilitation counselors in our institutions, we should also have them in public school systems on both the elementary and secondary level.
In the elementary schools they can help the teaching and administrative staff identify handicapped youngsters.
On the secondary level they can assist guidance counselors and others to help handicapped young people find suitable training opportunities as well as appropriate job placement in the community.
We know too that prevention of handicapping conditions is at least as important as dealing with disabilities once they occur.
For this reason, the Department of Education should exert leadership to promote courses in health education in the schools of this state.
Recruitment and training of competent rehabilitation personnel is another high priority.
Degree programs and special courses should be developed within the State, especially at the university.
Tri-state planning with the New England Center for Continuing Education might make these training programs available to rehabilitation personnel in Maine and in our neighboring states of New Hampshire and Vermont.
I am prepared to propose this development of a training curriculum through the New England Governor's Conference.
If highly skilled people are essential to the rehabilitation effort, we must improve the pay scale for both rehabilitation and correctional personnel.
More realistic caseloads and working hours are also important priorities.
These concerns will be reflected in the new salary plan proposed by the Department of Personnel, and in institutional budget estimates submitted to me for my work in preparing the state's budget for the 104th legislature.
The commission has proposed a plan for developing our existing resources to provide an overall pattern of comprehensive care. The plan includes, as a long-range goal, the development of a comprehensive rehabilitation center in the southern part of the state where medical rehabilitation programs are already well under way.
A center of this kind would provide the variety of services required to meet total medical, vocational and social rehabilitation needs within the state.
Vocational adjustment and eventual job placement must become a major thrust of our rehabilitation program.
There is, in this connection, a definite need to establish transitional adjustment and sheltered employment workshops for persons of all ages and disabilities, including the retarded.
We know that there are many persons considered "disabled" whose abilities, through proper training and placement, can become marketable.
A greater effort must be made to equip these disabled persons for suitable jobs, and then to match the job and the person through a computerized data processing system.
A list of known handicapped citizens will be kept up to date, and once the list has been established on a statewide basis, local employment offices will be able to locate within minutes a rehabilitated worker ready for placement.
To further this effort as time and funds permit, we need to go on and establish regional information and referral centers functioning as satellites of a central information and referral service.
Many public and private agencies operate or provide auxiliary services to rehabilitation programs.
Too often these agencies are physically separated from each other and operate without sufficient knowledge for adequate referral services.
A major goal for Government should be comprehensive social service centers – operating on a regional basis – which would pull together existing services and improve cooperative approaches to solving individual case problems.
I intend to ask the State planning office, the Bureau of Public Improvements and all State agencies to cooperate in planning this system.
I would expect that when they recommend financing, staffing and organization patterns their proposals would take into account your suggestion for a State information and referral service.
To further expand the availability of the State's vocational rehabilitation services, the State's Vocational Rehabilitation Act, which limits eligibility for these services, should be revised to conform more closely with the liberalized Federal statutes.
I expect to see a newly revised State act presented to the 104th legislature.
The legislature should also consider broadening the coverage of the architectural barriers law so that public buildings will be more accessible to our physically handicapped citizens.
To help implement these and a number of the other recommendations, I propose to revitalize the committee on employment of the handicapped by establishing it on a sound legal base and increasing its membership.
I have asked the committee to draft such legislation to be introduced at the next session.
In the meantime, I am issuing an executive order which will perpetuate the committee until permanent legislation can be enacted.
I believe that strengthening this committee and giving it permanent status will add immeasurably to the end result of all our rehabilitation efforts – namely, providing suitable employment to every man and woman who can be rehabilitated.
This is a realistic goal, and it is one in which the private employer has a great stake.
Many nationwide studies have shown beyond question that the handicapped, when properly trained and placed, are often above average in dependability and overall job performance. In the recent survey of employer attitudes conducted by the commission, 85 percent of the firms interviewed who hired handicapped workers rated these employees "average" or "above average".
This sampling of experienced employers should encourage other employers to take advantage of the abilities that these handicapped persons can contribute.
The measures I have discussed so far reflect, in large part, the careful judgments of the commission on rehabilitation needs. These judgments are only the beginning of a long process of implementation and further planning.
As Dr. Mayo pointed out earlier, the commission is only one of several planning groups that has been studying state services involved with the development of our human resources.
The commission has wisely maintained a close working relationship with these other groups, and particularly with the citizens task force on intergovernmental welfare problems.
Both groups recognized that persons in the lowest income brackets are far more prone to disabling illness and other handicapped conditions than the rest of the population.
Both groups have directed their efforts towards a common goal – substituting pay checks for welfare payments.
And both groups have developed programs that promise important new services for the people of our State.
To implement these programs will require time and money, though we should remember that we are aiming for the implementation of recommended programs by 1975.
Thus I am hopeful that the 104th Legislature will react favorably to many of the major recommendations of the Commission on Rehabilitation Needs, including the appropriation of increased funds for rehabilitation services.
Such an increased appropriation would entitle Maine to realize three times the amount of its appropriation in Federal monies earmarked for rehabilitation.
In the past, Maine has passed up more than one and a quarter million dollars in Federal funds because of the failure to appropriate its one-third matching share.
In 1970, the Federal matching component under present law will increase to four dollars of Federal money for each State dollar appropriated in cash or furnished in kind.
In our long-range planning, therefore, we must make a special effort to ensure that these Federal appropriations which we need and should have are not passed on to other less needy States.
I have singled out the legislature as having a major responsibility for ensuring that our handicapped citizens receive a fair chance for a useful, productive life.
Yet the legislature's effort can only be part of the story.
The rehabilitation process, leading to personal independence and economic self-sufficiency, requires all of our agencies, public and private, to pool their resources and adopt a team approach to each client and his family.
The employment security commission plays a vital role in matching clients and job opportunities.
Community action programs seek out the disabled poor and administer to local needs. In the final analysis, however, it must be all of our citizens who insist that our priceless human resources are no longer wasted. The very fact that all of us are here today is clear evidence that the need is recognized – and that there are many who are willing to assist in this vital enterprise.
I ask you, therefore, to share your knowledge and convictions with your fellow citizens, so that we can enlist them, too, in what should be our common cause.
WHAT ARE WE PREPARED TO REPORT TO THE GOVERNOR, THE LEGISLATURE, AND THE PEOPLE?
(By Senator Bennett D. Katz)
One of the characteristics of the public school education received by those of us who have reached middle age, is a most remarkable retention in our minds of words memorized an incredibly long time ago.
Remember the lines that Lieut. McCrea wrote "In Flanders Fields?" "To you from failing hands we throw the torch. Be yours to hold it high! If ye break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders Fields."
This afternoon, I think we are in the process of doing a little of this passing of the torch business, yet before we take our hands completely off the torch, we are going to be very sure it is grasped safely and surely.
When a group of men and women have devoted almost two years of their lives to a cause, there is an innate determination that the effort shall not have been in vain.
We who have served on the Maine Commission on Rehabilitation Needs were chosen from widely dissimilar ways of life, yet we have ended up with a common denominator – a zealous determination to make a lasting contribution to the cause of the handicapped.
When John Reed invited me to serve, at the end of 1966, my immediate reaction was to send my regrets. As the incoming Chairman of the Legislative Committee on Education, it was clear to me that I'd have my hands full in living up to heavy responsibilities in offering whatever leadership I could in the field of education. Yet I accepted, and now two years later, I have a deep feeling of gratitude to Gov. Reed and to his dynamic successor, Gov. Curtis, for permitting me the opportunity to serve in this stimulating project.
I have never devoted time in an area of human needs, where the needs were any clearer, nor the necessity for filling the needs any more pressing. I have never served in a project more capably led, nor more professionally staffed. George Nilson, our first chairman was a superb choice, and when regretably he left Maine, filling his shoes was a difficult challenge. The choice by Gov. Curtis of Dr. Leonard Mayo was warmly applauded by us all. Gov. Curtis, as a pretty successful politician himself, knows that we Republican Senators do not necessarily wax ecstatic over his every appointment. In this case, Gov. Curtis has hit a home run. Leonard Mayo has stepped in as a relief pitcher and has won the respect and admiration of us all.
So, here we are today, making a report to the Governor and to the people of Maine. On September 5th, before the Maine Conference of Social Welfare at the Samoset in Rockland, I presented a detailed preliminary report of our recommendations.
At that time, I went into substantial detail as to the specific nature of our proposals. I laid out our suggested roadmap for progress in meeting unfilled rehabilitation needs in Maine. It was, I said, a distillation of about 26 pounds of facts, surveys and reports, representing the thinking of thousands of Maine citizens. Using a system of regional task forces, we have, in effect, asked Maine people to hold up a giant mirror of self-evaluation.
Today, we are making our report to the Governor. We are documenting with evidence the fact that there are thousands of Maine people who are handicapped and who are not receiving the help which they need. We are recommending several changes in governmental structure to serve these needs more adequately. We are recommending the creation of a new Division of Rehabilitation within the Department of Health and Welfare, to join and consolidate several presently separate agencies which work in the field of rehabilitation.
In the field of corrections, we are recommending a whole new exciting concept of attitude towards the convicted offender, long overdue in Maine, where the entire emphasis will be transferred from punishment for all, to rehabilitation for the greatest possible numbers. In this area, the implications for state institutions are substantial. We recommend that sentencing offenders to a certain institution for a prescribed length of time should be discontinued in favor of sentencing to the Bureau of Corrections. The Bureau, after knowledgeable professional evaluation of the individual prisoner, motivated heavily in the direction of maximum rehabilitation, will be responsible for ultimate disposition of each case.
As a member of the Maine Senate, sorely disturbed about the shortcomings of the education of our children, I feel my heart leap at the perceptive findings of the Commission with respect to handicapped children. The wording in the report reads, "Early remediation for handicapped children, socially maladjusted and mentally retarded should be given greater attention by all responsible agencies."
Let me pause here, and declare very clearly, that in my opinion, the education of our handicapped children is today the largest unfilled need of education in the State of Maine. In the category of the emotionally disturbed alone, there are 16,000 school age children who are indeed disturbed to the extent that they must be considered handicapped. They desperately need help – help far beyond what even a devoted classroom teacher can offer. They need our help – and they are not getting it.
I can think of no other area where there is so much loss of human potential, and where so little is being done to make progress.
The emotionally disturbed child disrupts his class – or withdraws into a shell. Frequently, he becomes a drop-out and we label him a failure. We set programs into motion to seek him out to bring him back to school, to make up for his failure – yet, it is not the disturbed child who has failed – it is we who should recognize his problems and offer timely professional help – before it is too late. And so often, it is too late, when the elementary child has become a young adult, and has passed from the responsibility of the Department of Education, to the Department of Social Welfare, or predictably, the Bureau of Corrections.
Yes, the education of our handicapped children is, today, the largest unfilled need of education in the State of Maine. I am very proud that the Maine Education Council, of which I am a member, will support legislation before the 104th Legislature, which, in proposing revisions in the all- important school subsidy bill, calls for state aid in the case of the handicapped child at a level 300 % that of the ordinary pupil.
We, on the Maine Commission on Rehabilitation Needs, declare to you today that for the handicapped, education and training is the pass-key to human dignity and personal fulfillment. We declare that this education, this training is the responsibility of government, and the undeniable right of the handicapped individual.
Where is the money going to come from? Who will pay the cost implicit in the meeting of the needs of our handicapped people? Who will pay for their medical rehabilitation? Their education? Their training?
If we are to succeed, and succeed we must, we need an effectively functioning partnership – between government and the private sector. Each must assume that share of the burden which it can handle most effectively. The general hospitals, the sheltered workshops, the mental retardation and cerebral palsy groups, the Pine Tree Society and all the other associations of devoted workers in the vineyard of compassion – all must assume a proportionate share of the larger burden ahead.
In government, there must be renewed dedication to the importance of our tasks. And in both sectors the most crying need is for increasingly dynamic leadership for those with responsibilities, and ever increasing understanding and support from the people.
But where will the money come from? Let me speak for the state.
Governor Curtis is presently wrestling with a budget which surely must seem improbable, if not impossible. When it arrives in the form of a program for consideration by the 104th Legislature, it will contain demands for record-breaking appropriations. Just to support presently authorized programs will require some $20 to $25 million dollars in additional revenue per year.
The cost of local education will continue to rise. Support of our newly expanded University of Maine system will make heavy demands. Expansion of state parks and recreation, increasing activity in air and water pollution control, restructuring and modernization of our cumbersome and archaic social welfare programs – all these will add to the insatiable demands for more money.
Improvement of state institutions, continued maintenance and improvement of our highways, airports and port facilities, more realistic state retirement programs and more competitive pay scales for state employees who are continually pinched as the cost of living increases, broader promotion of Maine by DED, better protection of our people in the fields of banking, insurance and securities – all these require ever increasing support.
Yet, in a state of only a million people with limited resources, there is not an endless amount of money available, regardless of how worthy the purpose. And incredible though it may seem, Maine has never established any program of long range state goals and priorities.
When it comes to buildings – to bricks and mortar, we have indeed established priorities. Each biennium, the Bureau of Public Improvements takes all the requests from all state departments which are already in an intradepartmental priority listing, and integrates them in a single tally of requested capital improvements – listed in priority of statewide needs.
It do not suggest that this list is sacrosanct – that a determined governor or a nonconformist legislature never deviates, but in the BPI report we get a clear picture of all the non-highway capital needs of the state with an easily understood recommendation of relative urgency.
Not so however, in the biennial appropriations from the general fund and accumulated surplus. Here we have a Senate and a House reacting as effectively as possible to a proposed program of a governor, plus the demands of hundreds of legislative documents proposed by individual legislators.
Here, in the organized confusion of a legislative session there are no long-range guidelines apparent within which to operate. Here, a $10,000 request to underwrite the cost of attempting to encourage a few more Maine youngsters to attend dental school competes with a request by DED for more national advertising promoting our state – and a proposal to put much needed funds to expand a very successful apprenticeship program – and a request to support a program for practical nursing at one of our vocational technical institutes – and an appropriation to acquire land for the initial development of a state park – and many, many more. All worthwhile – all needed if we are to make progress. But we don't have money to do everything now.
The other day I heard of a proposal by a candidate for the Legislature to offer tuition-free education for any Maine youngster through 4 years of college. As Chairman of Education, one would expect me to support this as a meaningful method of increasing post high school opportunities. Instead, I found myself saying, "No! No! No!"
Sure, it would be nice to do this. But can we afford to consider seriously doing something because it would be "nice to do?"
In any system of priorities, with the urgent needs of so many people unfilled, can we afford to divert any tax monies to programs we don't deem absolutely essential?
When I hear of an eight year old boy who moves from one side of his room to another by crawling across the floor, when I know of youngsters whose untreated speech defects may relegate them to lives far short of their innate potential development, when I consider a father in his forties, suddenly disabled, with a life of fear and bitterness ahead of him, then I begin to develop my own set of priorities.
We vigorously support the establishment of long range state goals and priorities, and declare our belief that by any standard, meeting the needs of the handicapped must be given a high priority.
In my opinion, the absence of a system of long range state goals and priorities is a barrier to the successful recognition and realization of our goals.
In my opinion, the biennial system of legislative sessions is a barrier to the successful recognition and realization of our goals.
In my opinion, the combination of factors which in recent years has caused a turnover of some 53% amongst the ranks of our legislators each biennium – this is a barrier to the successful recognition and realization of our goals.
In short, I am saying that the absence of a system of long range state goals and priorities, developed by the executive combined with the existence of a legislature which meets too infrequently, is by weight of numbers one of the largest in the United States, which by its appallingly high turnover of members must surely be one of the most inexperienced in the nation – this in my opinion operates as a very significant barrier to the successful recognition and realization of our goals.
We acknowledge to the Governor our deep appreciation for the understanding, encouragement and complete cooperation he has given us from the start. He has shown a deep awareness of the importance of our task.
This then, is the report I make to the Governor. This then is the challenge which we lay before him and the people of the State. It is a challenge of heroic proportions, with no easy answers, no simplistic solutions. We eagerly await his response.
I speak as a Republican member of the Maine Senate, and say that there are no partisan implications in our concern for the less fortunate. I pledge to our Democratic Governor that, God and the electorate willing, I will work with him in any way, in every way, in a bi-partisan partnership to translate our words into action, our programs into service.
There are thousands of people, not here today, who are depending on us. They are not as vocal as we. They are not as mobile as we. But their cause is our cause.
And in their cause, let us be tenacious, dedicated and in the end, effective.
We must do no less!