ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, October 22, 1996 TAG: 9610220038
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
GIVEN A CHANCE, many people with impaired abilities can be valuable employees, a Roanoke placement company and its clients are proving.
William Muse walks to work. He is 20, but hasn't learned to drive.
His mother has to tell him what time to leave the house, because he struggles with abstract concepts such as time.
Muse is part of the Roanoke area's disabled population, an estimated 14,000 people based on the latest census. But he differs from many disabled in an important respect: He has a job.
He was placed by a Tidewater-based company, Hired Hands & Associates Inc., an employment service for the disabled that expanded to Roanoke last summer. It is finding plenty of business.
Hired Hands tests would-be workers to see what they can and want to do. It then helps them land jobs and get started. The Roanoke office has placed 20 people since it opened July8, said Terry Day, who heads the operation.
The business community has given Hired Hands ``a very warming reception,'' Day said.
The national unemployment rate for disabled people of working age was 60 percent at the time of the 1990 Census. Advocates say it is nearly 70 percent now. The number finding jobs is rising, but too slowly, advocates said.
Very Special Arts in Washington, D.C., an international advocacy group, said discrimination keeps many handicapped people out of work. Employers fear the disabled aren't capable or will be a drag on their operation, said spokeswoman Mona Peloquin.
At a Roanoke Food Lion supermarket, William Muse is proving just the opposite.
``He's a very good worker,'' said Henry King, who manages the store at 4350 Franklin Road S.W. Muse's learning disability is not an impediment, King said.
Public school officials put Muse in touch with Hired Hands, which represents a move by the state to increase this area's services for disabled people who want jobs. The state Department of Rehabilitative Services pays Hired Hands' fees and authorized it to do business here.
With one full-time employee and four working part time, it is small compared with two local nonprofit organizations that offer similar services - Goodwill Industries Tinker Mountain Inc. and Arc Roanoke Inc.
Tim and Anna Burns founded Hired Hands, making a business of a program to hire the deaf at New York's Marriott Marquis Hotel. He had been the hotel's personnel manager; she had worked as an administrative aide and sign language interpreter on the program. Before they quit to form their company in 1989, they had added 50 deaf housekeepers, painters, carpenters and janitors to the hotel's payroll, he said. They came to Virginia in 1991.
The biggest obstacle disabled people face in looking for work is their ability to get to and from the job, Day said. Many do not drive.
State funding is available to help buy special equipment. In one recent case, the state helped underwrite a new scooter for a disabled man so he could fill a job in downtown Roanoke, Day said. The man is a parking lot attendant for Valley Metro, which runs a few lots in addition to the bus system.
By law, Day is prevented from telling employers details of an applicant's disability. The Americans with Disabilities Act says employers can't ask, either. In making a hiring decision, employers can ask about a person's abilities, but not disabilities.
``I tell the employer they are getting a person that is qualified, dependable, willing to do the work,'' Day said.
That sums up Muse pretty well. His boss said he asks for extra work. Said his mother, Ruby: ``I believe if they called him at 12 o'clock at night, he'd go.''
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ROGER HART\Staff. William Muse is ``a very goodby CNBworker,'' according to the manager of the Food Lion on Franklin
Road. Muse found the job through Hired Hands & Associates. color.