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To offer its services to disabled persons in order that they may
register with the Bureau and take advantage of its benefits.
To arrange for therapeutic treatment for disabled persons, although
it may not from its funds pay for such treatment, but merely arrange
for it, in State aided or State controlled hospitals, when the disabled
persons are absolutely unable to pay for such treatment.
To provide from its funds artificial appliances, as arms, legs, hands,
feet or body braces when such appliances are necessary from a voca-
tional or occupational standpoint for a disabled person to return to
suitable employment, and only when such disabled person is a vietim
of an industrali employment accident in Pennsylvania, and unable to
pay for such appliances.
To arrange for training for a disabled person in virtually any in-
dustrial establishment or training institution equipped to give proper
training, and to pay for such training the amount necessary in each
individual case, but in no single case more than $15.00 a week.
Charged with such duties in a Commonwealth of approximately
9,000,000 population with more than 1,000 separate municipalities,
with mines and mills, and hazardous employments, causing permanent
disabilities to a thousand workers a year, and with the possibility of
expending $75,000 to $80,000 a year for all purposes throughout the
entire State, it is obvious that the Bureau must, of necessity, have all
local cooperation possible.
The Bureau of Rehabilitation, consequently, considers as its first
aim the returning of a disabled person to suitable remunerative em-
ployment, at the earliest possible moment after convalescence, taking
into account all latent capabilities of the disabled person for ambitious
training, for occupational advance, together with the personal condi-
tions of age, educational basis, manual dexterity, domestic responsi-
bilities, economic status, residence location, adjacent available employ-
ment opportunities, and all other similar factors affecting each case.
Rehabilitation is consequently the application of common sense prin-
ciples in each individual case, which must be thoroughly investigated
in the home community. Rehabilitation cannot be considered as an
abstract problem ; each case must be separately considered.
HOW CAN THE CITIZEN AID DISABLED PERSONS?
Citizens of Pennsylvania, having knowledge of disabled persons,
unemployed but who, they believe, can be fitted for, and returned to
suitable employment tasks should send the names and addresses of
such disabled persons to the Bureau of Rehabilitation, Department of
Labor and Industry, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
The efforts of the Bureau of Rehabilitation will be to return disabled
persons so reported, to suitable employment. The persons so reported
must be considered as susceptible to rehabilitation, or of being capable
of returning to some form of work. They must be of the legal employ-
able age in Pennsylvania,—over fourteen years of age if having com-
pleted the sixth grade in school, or over sixteen years of age if not
having completed the sixth grade in school.
When the name and address of a disabled person is received at the
Bureau of Rehabilitation at Harrisburg, a registration form, with
sxplanatory letter, is sent by mail to such disabled person with the
request that the questions on the registration form be properly an-