Abandoned To Their Fate
Community Vocational Programs
Narrator: Yet Community Vocational Programs – still under the guise of treatment – continued during the 70s and early 80s to segregate people by labels, maintaining workshops for those with mild disabilities and activity centers for persons with more severe mental retardation. Professionals used IQs and diagnoses to sort people into their proper places within an elaborate continuum of services. They used terms like "treatment modality" to justify the endless hours people spent doing ceramics and crafts.