Home Service Health Aide Careers for the Handicapped

In the past decade, many manpower programs have been designed and implemented in response to the needs and aspirations of the poor and minority groups in our society. One of the most innovative programs has been the New Careers Program. As articulated by A. Pearl and F. Riessman (1965), the New Careers Program was designed to respond to the critical manpower shortage in the field of human services, and, also, to enable disenfranchised groups to gain occupational and social mobility through simultaneous education and training programs.The New Careers Program had its fair share of labor pains, and, subsequently, its successes and failures. While New Careers was designed to serve the poor and minority group members, it tended to bypass the handicapped, who are, for the most part, both poor and members of a minority group—the handicapped. The 1968 Vocational Rehabilitation Act corrected that problem through Section 4(a) (2) (C), New Careers in Rehabilitation, and through Section 4(a) (2) (D), New Careers for the Handicapped. Only in June, 1970, however, was the New Careers Program in Vocational Rehabilitation begun. The purpose of this paper is to describe one such rehabilitation program.</jats:p