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The enterprises conduct their operations and service within a framework of purpose, policies, procedures and standards established by the National Association of Goodwill Industries. They are recognized as sheltered workshops by the Wage and Hour Division of the United States Department of Labor.

Effective Service For The Disabled

In varying degrees the organizations provide some or all of the following services for the handicapped and disabled: rehabilitation, occupational and employment training; occupational and work therapy; work adjustment and experience; employment, occupational advice, placement, social service, financial subsidies, medical supervision, and self-expression activities.

The services of Goodwill Industries are available to:

(a) the more able handicapped persons who require work experience, adjustment, and interim employment pending their placement in commercial industry. Such persons usually require only short-periods of service and when placed in industry are reasonably certain of continued employment;

(b) the less able handicapped persons who may be placeable in commercial industry during times of full employment. Because of their lesser abilities, they may not be employed regularly in the commercial world and would thus require employment in Goodwill Industries from time to time during their periods of commercial unemployment.

(c) the severely handicapped persons who are able to do certain work well but are unable to compete with their more fortunate fellows in commercial industry, or who, because of their physical condition, may be a hazard to themselves or their fellows in industry. These are employed for longer periods of time in Goodwill Industries or in supervised home employment.

In serving persons in each of these groups, the ultimate aim is not only to help them develop to their fullest capacity within Goodwill Industries, but to help them to pass on into commercial pursuits. Even for severely disabled persons the Industries are vestibules through which these persons are passing to the larger room of such commercial industrial activity and such participation in community life as their more limited abilities will permit.

Discards Afford Opportunities

The historic, basic, industrial activity of Goodwill Industries, used to provide service for the handicapped, has been the skillful utilization of discarded material. The collection, reconditioning, and sale of material and the attendant promotion and office activities involved afford opportunities for the development of many skills, the teaching of some trades and millions of hours of productive employment as the material is converted into useful products.

Incidentally, the use of this material also results in the payment of nearly four million dollars in wages to handicapped persons each year, and the conservation of millions of articles of wearing apparel, household goods, furniture and other merchandise which is started on a second round of usefulness through Goodwill stores.

It is said that the reconditioning of an article requires as much or more skill and ingenuity than the making of a new article, especially in these days of assembly-line production. If this be so, workers in Goodwill Industries are having an experience denied persons employed in the performance of operation A on machine B for weeks and months at a time. Expertness in the reconditioning of furniture, household appliances, electrical and mechanical articles, clothing, shoes, and dolls leads to opportunities for self-employment and employment in service shops engaged in reconditioning and servicing various types of articles.

New Work Projects Provided

But Goodwill Industries do not limit their industrial activities to the use of discarded material. Many are engaged in the manufacture of new goods or contract work or so-called craft work. These activities provide repetitive operations required by certain of the more severely disabled persons. The craft work provides an outlet for artistic skills.

Handicapped persons employed are paid wages in cash and for the most part on an hourly basis. In fixing wages the agencies are governed by the Fair Labor Standards Act, the wage requirements of the several States, the rates for similar work in commercial industry, and the relative productivity of the physically disabled person as compared to the productivity of the vocationally able worker in similar work.

The approach of Goodwill Industries, in serving the handicapped and disabled, is from the point of view that the service should result in productive employment and a fuller development of personality. They see the disabled person as a whole person. They recognize that initial medical service has been given, that physical restoration is in process or has been completed, and academic vocational training may parallel service at Goodwill or may have been completed prior to the client's having been referred to the agency.

Service of Goodwill may begin as soon as the client can be productively employed or given occupational training, even for short periods of time in the shop or in the home. It should continue through until a maximum schedule of employment is realized in the shop and finally to placement in commercial industry if this be possible. It should continue beyond placement, but that follow-up should not be a "crutch." Rather it should be for the purpose of making certain that the employee has made the proper adjustment to his new work and expressing interest in his continuing success. Goodwill Industries in 90 cities in 34 states and the District of Columbia provided employment and service for nearly 20,000 different persons last year. The average number employed daily approximated 6,000.