Employment and Learning Disabilities

There is growing concern in Canada that a significant proportion of clients requesting assistance in finding jobs from Employment Centres may have learning disabilities. Such clients, when accurately identified, can be referred to appropriate services and thereby helped to take the first steps on the path to productive lives. A difficulty for Employment Counsellors may be that learning disabled clients fail to identify themselves as such, or are not able to clearly articulate their needs.

The following is a list of attributes which an employment counsellor might note as possible indications of a learning disability:

1. Lack of academic proficiency: Learning disabilities often interfere with the acquisition and use of language and/or computation. Adults whose reading or writing skills and basic academic functioning do not seem commensurate with intelligence may have learning disabilities. Questioning will usually reveal a difficult, failure-ridden school history. A handwriting sample is often a good screening device. Look for reversal of letters (although few adults still reverse letters), letters out of sequence, unusual spelling or sentence structure, poor punctuation, sloppy writing, uneven letters and spacing, or printing rather than writing, or a mixture of printing and writing.

2. Language Processing Skills: A client who seems to be of average intelligence but does not handle the interview situation well...i.e. misunderstands questions; leaves out pieces of information; answers to questions may be difficult to understand; verbal responses may be slow, rambling and be off topic; mispronunciation of common multisyllabic words such as specific, hospital, spaghetti, remember, aluminum, cinnamon, identification.

3. Lack of Social Skills: Auditory and visual processing deficits which underlie academic difficulties often preclude the development of adequate social skills. Problems to look for would include difficulty taking turns in conversation (i.e. excessive interruptions); lack of emotional expression; poor eye contact; lack of facial expression; violation of territorial space (sitting or standing too close); failure to "track" a conversation; impulsivity; sharing of too intimate information; and other forms of inappropriate behaviour.

4. Lack of Job Skills : People with learning disabilities may present with few, if any, job skills, and may have difficulty acquiring job skills. Without the special support services similar to those which learning disabled children require in school (which may not have been available when adult clients were in school) learning disabled people might be expected to meet with difficulty or failure in job training programs.

5. Lack of Previous Experience : Questions about past experiences may reveal a flat profile with a paucity of social, community, athletic or recreational activities. Reasons for this include social incompetence, spending an inordinate amount of time on remediation, uncoordination and the low self esteem so often associated with school failure. The result of such a background is lack of insight into skills, abilities and interests which would assist in making vocational choices

6. Unrealistic Aspirations : Overwhelmed by lack of success in academic and social endeavours, many learning disabled people give up thinking about the possible and begin to fantasize about the impossible. An example would be a client with a maximum achievement of grade ten in a modified program who wants to become a lawyer or pharmacist. On the other hand, a very intelligent person with learning disabilities may settle for the most menial, repetitious job - when the potential, given appropriate intervention - could be significantly more sophisticated.

7. Rigidity : Many adults with learning disabilities have not developed a comfortable self-concept and the resulting rigidity makes it difficult for them to take the perspective of others into account and to relate the realities and expectations of the market place to their own abilities and limitations. They will strongly resist suggestions aimed at bringing unrealistic career goals in line with abilities and realities.

8. Defensiveness: The repeated failure experienced by some people with learning disabilities leaves them as adults who are excessively defensive about the self- value they have managed to retain. They tend to reject any suggestions about areas of weakness, or changes in behaviour which might lead to greater vocational success.

9. Disorganization : Spatial-temporal processing deficits result in disorganization which is apparent in a lack of ability to organize oneself to accomplish a task. The more steps required to accomplish a task, the more apparent the disorganization will be, and assignments will not be carried out. This deficit is often interpreted as a "lack of motivation", inefficiency, or "lack of initiative".

10. Learned Helplessness : (Passivity, lack of initiative). Because their efforts have so often not met with success, many learning disabled people feel victimized by life experiences. Failure in school or jobs are then attributed to lack of understanding, stupidity, or malicious intent of others. Such a client will wait for the counsellor to find all the answers to their problems, rather than seeing themselves as responsible for accommodating their learning disability in the job situation.

When several of these attributes are apparent, and particularly if they include academic difficulties, referral should be made to a competent professional in order that a complete assessment of learning style and learning ability can be performed. Results of such an assessment should help to elucidate areas where success would be most likely, or where intervention would be most likely to yield

results. Employment counsellors do not need to be experts in learning disabilities in order to be effective. They do need to understand the nature of learning disabilities and they do need to be creative problem solvers. Anyone using the services of an Employment Centre should be treated with dignity, with efforts made by the centre personnel to understand their client's unique learning needs.