Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 8, 1994                   TAG: 9406090036
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-1   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: By BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium

BOARD SAYS SHIFT FROM WORKSHOP CONCEPT REASON FOR JOB CUTS

Executive Director Lynn Chenault and 10 of the 13 Community Services Board members appeared before the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors for an hourlong meeting Monday on the job cuts. Parents of some of the workers object because they believe their children will be unemployable outside the workshop.

Monday's special meeting resolved nothing, in part because of a self-imposed, one-hour limit so six of the supervisors could move on to a previously scheduled Public Service Authority board meeting. The supervisors, who make the largest financial contribution to community services programs among New River Valley governments, will take up the issue again next week.

Concerned parents, meanwhile, have been invited to meet with the Community Services Board staff again at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Landmark Building, 644 1st St., Radford.

Armed with facts, figures and an admission that they might not have done the best job of informing families of the changes, Chenault and others explained the change in philosophy away from workshops - where most of the workers are mentally retarded or have some other type of disability - and toward "supported employment."

That program, which the Community Services Board has had for seven years, tries to help people with developmental disabilities find and keep part-time, minimum wage jobs in the private sector.

Though tight budgets contributed to the cutbacks, the main reason was the shift away from the sheltered workshop concept.

"Just as we learned that isolating people from the community in institutions was not the kindest or best thing for them after all, we now understand that segregating them within the community from the 'normal' population is not really best for them or the rest of society," Chenault said.

More than 60 people, many of them family members of the affected workers, listened to the presentations. Some of the same parents asked the supervisors two weeks ago to look into the layoffs and find out why they were to occur. Afterward, one parent, Paul Graham, said he still needed more information.

His 33-year-old daughter, Cathy Graham, has been in the New River Valley Workshop for 11 years. "She has more abilities than some," Graham said. "As far as her qualifying for supportive employment ... it's not likely."

Of the 10 people who will lose their jobs at the end of the month, five are "excellent candidates" for supported employment, Chenault said. Of the other five people, three from Giles County will go into "alternative day support," a means to learn basic life skills that will not provide a paycheck. Two others have not paid their fees to participate in the workshop program, Chenault said. He declined to comment further on their status.

Of the five eligible candidates, three are from Montgomery, one is from Pulaski County and one is from Radford. The families of three of those five candidates have not accepted the changes.