Cleveland, August 7 – Privately funded organizations, not the government, are the way to help people with disabilities obtain jobs, Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson told The RespectAbility Report following the Fox News debate Thursday evening.
“Most of our social problems can be taken care of by business, industry, academia, Wall Street, churches and community groups,” Carson said. “The government can serve as a very good facilitator for these things. That will work much better than the government trying to solve all these other problems. That was never what our government was designed for.”
Carson also praised Opportunity Village in Las Vegas.
“It’s designed for people with various types of mental handicaps to give them jobs,” Carson said. “And it’s 80 percent privately funded. Those are the kind of things that we really need to be encouraging across the country.”
However, some of what Opportunity Village does is a sheltered workshop. Seventy percent of working-age Americans with disabilities are out of the workforce (compared to 28 percent of Americans without disabilities), and of those people with disabilities who are working, more than 400,000 are earning sub minimum wage (as little as 20 cents an hour) in sheltered workshops.
When asked by The RespectAbility Report about sheltered workshops, Carson defended Opportunity Village by saying, “Have you been there? The people are happy.”
Negative attitudes toward people with disabilities are major barriers to competitive and integrated employment, which is the desired outcome for many people with disabilities.
As someone who was almost killed by a Hospital in Baltimore Maryland, in a neurosurgical operation, and who received very little assistance in the afterward, I think Carson is wrong.
I had to go to Canada to preserve my life. Since returning, I have had to find my own way and on my own means for recuperation. No public or private entity ever lent me useful assistance.
[…] Moines, Iowa, Jan. 10 – Dr. Ben Carson has previously called for privately funded organizations, not the government, to help people with disabilities gain employment. This past Wednesday in […]
[…] be taken care of by business, industry, academia, Wall Street, churches and community groups,” Carson said in early August following the first primary debate of the season. “The government can serve as a very good […]
[…] speaking in person with RespectAbility, Carson talked about learning about disability issues, his plan for improving the lives of PwDs and enabling PwDs to have […]