TABLE 2.-Number of persons rehabilitated during the year ended June 30, 1937, and number of persons in process of rehabilitation on that date, by States 1

1 Data are taken from Digest of Annual Reports of State Boards for Vocational Education to the Office of Education, Division of Vocational Education, fiscal year ended June 30, 1937 (mimeographed), Table 23. The figures are provisional, subject to final audit of State reports.

TABLE 3.-Number of persons in process of vocational rehabilitation, by status, June 30, 1937 1

An analysis of the vocational rehabilitation program shows that the service is limited largely to those among the physically disabled who after adequate preparation can be reemployed in usual lines of competitive work. At the present rate, the number rehabilitated each year represents approximately 20 percent of the 50,000 persons who become physically disabled annually and appear to be feasible for rehabilitation for competitive employment.

TABLE 4.-Number of disabled persons vocationally rehabilitated during each year and number in process of rehabilitation at the end of each year, 1921-37 1

1 Data supplied by the U. S. Office of Education, June 16, 1938. The data include corrections made as a result of final audits; they do not in all cases correspond with data in published reports.

Many persons experienced in rehabilitation work or engaged in related services who have studied the problem of the physically disabled believe that service should also be rendered to the group who can be employed only under sheltered workshop conditions. State rehabilitation department budgets would have to be expanded to serve this group..

Types of Services Rendered

In the preceding chapter it was pointed out that vocational rehabilitation is an individual service and that various cases require different types of help. Analysis of the data concerning the 11,091 persons rehabilitated during the fiscal year 1937 indicates that approximately 60 percent of them received training and that a majority were placed in positions consistent with their training. (See Table 5.)

TABLE 5.-Distribution of the 11,091 persons rehabilitated during the year ending June 30, 1937, by type of services rendered and by placement 1

1 Data supplied by the U. S. Office of Education, June 16, 1938. The data include corrections made as a result of final audits; they do not in all cases correspond with data in published reports. Table 6 shows that a total of 6,583 persons, excluding duplicates, received training.

Characteristics of Rehabilitants

Some of the characteristics of the 11,091 persons rehabilitated during the fiscal year 1937 are shown in Table 6. Of the total, 22 percent were women. The proportion of women has increased since 1926, when they constituted only 13 percent of the entire group.1

The policy of selecting for rehabilitation only persons who are vocationally handicapped as a result of physical disability, and limiting the service to those who can qualify for jobs under normal working conditions, results in a large proportion of young people among those assisted. Of the persons rehabilitated during the fiscal year 1937, 64 percent were under 31 years of age and only 8 percent were over 50.

Approximately half of the disabled rehabilitated in 193637 (52 percent) had been in at least the tenth grade of school, and about one-third (34 percent) had completed high school.

In the 17 Southern States for which a special analysis was made, 16.0 percent of the white and 57.1 percent of the Negro clients during the fiscal year 1936 had not reached the sixth grade; 46.6 percent of the white and 80.9 percent of the Negro clients had not reached the tenth grade; and 13.3 percent of the white and only 4.8 percent of the Negro

1 Federal Board for Vocational Education, Tenth Annual Report (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1926), p. 167.

clients had progressed beyond high school. It seems fair to assume that the need for special training among the Negroes is greater than among the whites, yet during the fiscal year 1936 only 40.3 percent of the Negroes, as compared with 65.2 percent of the white clients, received service with training. Prosthesis was the predominating type of service rendered Negroes.

TABLE 6.-Distribution of the 11,091 persons rehabilitated during the year ended June 30, 1937, by sex, age, marital status, number of dependents, and schooling 1

1

The data include correc

1 Data supplied by the U. S. Office of Education, June 16, 1938. tions made as a result of final audits; they do not in all cases correspond with data in published reports.

Types of Disabilities

When the Vocational Rehabilitation Act was passed, it was thought that the majority of cases reported would be

2 Additional details may be found in D. A. Wilkerson, Special Problems of Negro Education, The Advisory Committee on Education, Staff Study No. 12 (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1938).

persons injured in industry who would receive workmen's compensation, which would provide maintenance during training. The records indicate, however, that this was a mistaken idea. The percentage of employment accident cases receiving rehabilitation has been steadily decreasing, whereas the number of other cases has been increasing. Persons rehabilitated during 1936-37 whose disabilities were the result of accidents in employment were only 21 percent of the total. (See Table 7.) Most of the persons for whom rehabilitation service is provided suffer from major physical handicaps. Of those rehabilitated during 1936-37, 75 percent had orthopedic disabilities of the hands, arms, feet, legs, or back.

TABLE 7.—Distribution of the 11,091 persons rehabilitated during the year ended June 30, 1937, by origin and by nature of disability 1

1

1 Data supplied by the U.S. Office of Education, June 16, 1938. The data include corrections made as a result of final audits; they do not in all cases correspond with data in published reports.