Routine Tasks Help Disabled Out of Their Rut

Commercial airline passengers are routinely advised upon takeoff: “Should there be a loss of cabin pressurization, oxygen masks will be released automatically from overhead.�

What they are not told is that the key triggering mechanisms on many of the life-saving devices are assembled by developmentally disabled people employed by a vocational education program at Lanterman State Hospital in Pomona.

Last year about 100,000 of the parts, known as actuators, were put together under a contract with Scott Aviation of Sierra Madre, which manufactures the yellow masks for major aircraft companies.

Joe Malinko, a Scott spokesman, said the masks “fly around the world� in part because of the “good job� done at Lanterman.

Other companies share that opinion of the products made at state hospitals. Indeed, the Scott contract is one of almost 50, worth a total of nearly $400,000 a year, between eight state hospital workshops and private industry, according to state health officials.

The workshops serve as a chain of small independent businesses that provide training for the developmentally disabled who otherwise might not have an opportunity to work.

Developmentally disabled, according to state health officials, means that the patients’ functioning is impaired by mental retardation or other handicaps such as epilepsy and cerebral palsy.

Nonetheless, the workshop employees are guided by the motto: “We package and assemble anything.�

Within the last year they have bottled oil for musical instruments, assembled filing cabinets, packaged thousands of bars of soap imported from India and made up 5,000 medical “survival kits� for the Democratic National Convention.

The Lanterman program was singled out for praise by state health officials last fall when they announced that all the state hospitals for the developmentally disabled had become accredited for the first time by a private agency that monitors services for the disabled nationwide.

State officials have also said that the Lanterman workshop, which was set up in the mid-1970s, is more aggressive than others in drumming up business.

The total population of all the state hospitals is about 7,000. About 750 people are involved in the workshop program statewide, 144 of them at Lanterman. Of those 144 only about 80 actually live at the hospital.

On a recent morning there was a hum of activity as the workers went about their tasks in the workshop, which once served as a hospital ward.

One crew was hammering together wooden planters, another was assembling filing cabinets, and still others were wrapping soap in plastic or packaging aspirin or plastic utensils. All the work is supervised by staff members who oversee 8 to 10 workers each.

The workers earn from as little as $2 to $100 a week, depending on the degree of their skills. Workshop receipts not spent on wages are plowed back into the program to buy equipment, or go to reimburse Lanterman for building maintenance, repairs and utilities.

The workers are on the job as long as six hours a day. They get an hour off for lunch, plus breaks. And, as in any business, they also get annual vacations.

One of the workers is wheelchair-bound Victor Jennings, 24, who commutes to Lanterman from a residential treatment home in Pomona. As he slowly and carefully packaged finger bandages, Jennings said he was saving his earnings to buy a video recorder.

The workshop programs started at state hospitals in the 1960s to give patients “a sense that they’re doing something for society,� said Don Bowling, who oversees clinical services for the state Department of Developmental Services.

He said the normal person “would be insulted or get so bored� with the routine tasks performed by the workshop employees, “whereas the retarded can be trained to . . . approach it so it gets done and produces something.�

Among the products made at the seven other state hospitals are ceramic wind chimes and silk-screened T-shirts and cards. And some hospital patients near the Northern California wine country graft grapevines.

Even though the workshops compete against private businesses for contracts, the California Chamber of Commerce has not heard any complaints from its members.

“I doubt that anyone in private business would oppose that kind of activity,� said Doug Gordon, a chamber spokesman in Sacramento.

Last year, Lanterman had contracts valued at $102,000, ranking it second in the state hospital system behind Camarillo. Bowling said Lanterman’s workshop program is the most comprehensive in the system.

Moreover, workshop director Alan L. Murray regularly seeks new customers. Murray, formerly a teacher and a sales representative for the Campbell Soup Co., said he makes a formal sales pitch to would-be clients.

He said some firms turn him down. Others are “a little apprehensive� about the Lanterman program. And still others are receptive because they have heard about the workshop from other businesses.

One of the longest-running Lanterman contracts has been with Scott Aviation. The arrangement began seven or eight years ago when an inspector at Scott Aviation retired and began to help out at the hospital workshop, said Malinko, Scott’s purchasing agent.

The retired inspector convinced company officials that the patients could assemble the actuators. Scott supplies the parts, including vinyl tubing, nylon cord and pins, to the hospital.

The workers assemble about 100,000 a year to be placed in oxygen masks aboard planes built for McDonnell Douglas Corp., Boeing Co. and Lockheed Corp., Malinko said. They also glue together other pieces for pilot oxygen masks.