A plea to continue work-for-pay programs for clinical value.
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Humans↗
Biomedical subjects
D Safier
Publications and source records attributed to D Safier.
Patient work under Fair Labor Standards: the issue in perspective.
The 1973 federal court ruling in Souder v. Brennan required that patient workers in institutions for the mentally ill and mentally retarded be paid in accordance with the minimum wage and other provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The author believes that ruling, which ran contrary to widely accepted institutional practices, is more readily understandable when viewed in the broader context of wage-and-hour legislation. He presents a brief history of the legislation, discusses the provisions relating to the employment of handicapped workers included in the 1966 amendments, and emphasizes that one basic principle underlies all the regulations and procedures: a patient must be paid what he earns. He also urges increased attention to the clinical design of compensated work systems to promote therapeutic and rehabilitative objectives.
Persons with Disabilities↗
Patient rehabilitation through hospital work under Fair Labor Standards.
Payment of patients for hospital work assignments has become a matter of great concern for mental health institutions since the 1973 federal court ruling requiring the Department of Labor to enforce the 1966 amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act. A work program in compliance with Fair Labor Standards has been operating at Binghamton (N.Y.) Psychiatric Center since 1971. Certificates from the labor department permit the hospital to pay less than the minimum wage for patients in occupational training or in sheltered employment in a regular job. The authors believe that work therapy has important clinical and rehabilitative functions, and that patients should not be denied the opportunity for such work because of the court ruling.
Persons with Disabilities↗