More than 3.5 million Texans have at least one disability, according to data from the American Community Survey. And the Texas Workforce Commission says about 730,000 of them are active members of the state’s labor force.
Art Carter, founder of Stella Kidd — a Longview employment service for people with disabilities that assists clients with vocational rehabilitation — has started a nonprofit organization to help more adults with disabilities get into the workforce.
Carter said for many of those Texans, the difficulties of getting and maintaining employment are compounded by a lack of social networking skills.
“There is about 9.6% of the population in East Texas that has what is called a qualified disability, which averages about 7,700 people. What we found through Stella Kidd is that many of our clients lack any sort of social network,” he said. “We have friends or someone we can call a friend, but many individuals with special needs or disabilities don’t have the same ability to communicate their needs to others in a friendship so in return, they kind of become isolated or segregated. The one thing that they’ve told me the most while dealing with them for the past two years is that, ‘I want to have friends.’”…