the normal society (Goldberg, 1992, p. 1992). He viewed work as the primary need and activity for the disabled person, and he believed that training centers should provide training for work, not psychotherapy. In some of his writings and teachings he said that private services were superior to public services because bureaucracies tend to become cumbersome and get in their own way.
Ideally the vocational rehabilitation system is intended to be a federal/state partnership which provides services to help people with disabilities return to work. But does it do that? And at what cost? One study focusing only on the state of Virginia showed that the program works much better for women than for men and for persons with physical impairments better than those with emotional impairments (Dean & Dolan, 1991, p. 582). This may represent a difficulty within the emphasis of vocational rehabilitation or it may be evidence of deep-seated societal prejudice against emotional and mental illness. The results of the Virginia study are quite similar to that of Olshansky--that persons with backgrounds of mental illness did better in the world of work when they simply pretended to be normal.
The financial cost of the vocational rehabilitation movement and its relative level of limited success is phenomenal. Even before reaching adulthood, youth with learning disabilities who drop out of high school cost the nation $532 billion in dropout-related expenditures (Ryan & Price, 1992, p. 7). These costs include benefits from social services, economic support, and employment training. It was estimated by another researcher that a typical client costs the system $50,705, and this great expenditure does not support the individual in living independently (Rubin & Millard, 1991, p. 15). These expenses are for such things as adaptations in the home, a vehicle with modifications, and personal care assistance, all of which make the individual comfortabl...