One day at a time, one step at a time

Sheltered workshops provide space for education without stress

 

For many people with disabilities, a normal training scheme is out of the question. In sheltered workshops, they can learn how to carry out tasks of varying difficulty and so participate in working life.

Collecting the plates, cleaning the tables and setting them again – at busy times in the canteen at the Centre for Integration and Vocational Education and Training in Neunkirchen, it can get pretty fast-paced. At the beginning, Samantha Zander found it all rather too hectic. But now that the 19 year old has been here for nearly a year, she handles it all pretty slickly.

For young people with disabilities, an ordinary training scheme can often be too demanding. However, on a two-year vocational education and training course in a sheltered workshop, they can learn to carry out certain tasks well.

In Saarland, there are currently some 500 people in this kind of vocational education and training. Samantha Zander is still undergoing basic training. When she finishes, she is going to do work experience somewhere at the sheltered workshop.

"I'd like to work in the bistro with the customers," said Zander, who helps out there sometimes already. The working conditions are not the same as those in an ordinary restaurant. "In the workshop's on-site businesses, trainees are supported by trained staff, who help take the pressure off," explained Ludwig Lorenz, director of the centre. "If something doesn't work out, trainees can simply have another go tomorrow."

That is the philosophy behind the way skills are acquired at the sheltered workshop. Those who train and work here "do not have access to the regular labour market" – that is the criterion laid down by the Federal Employment Agency.

In Saarland, 80 per cent of workers at the sheltered workshop have learning difficulties. The rest have psychological problems, a physical disability or complex disabilities.

"Therapeutic issues are the focus for those working at the sheltered workshop. Each should have the opportunity to develop according to their own potential," explained Michael Schmaus, managing director at the State Council for Sheltered Workshops in Saarland.

In Saarland, there are a total of 11 such sheltered workshops, funded by various providers. Activities range from agriculture to simple assembly in the field of metalworking to the packaging industry.


Source: Local newspaper Saarbrücker Zeitung, saarbruecker-zeitung.de, revised by iMOVE, February 2016