Abstract

Sheltered Workshops for people with disabilities (WfbM) aim to ensure the right to participate in working life, including vocational and personality development, and to help build up or restore a person's employability. They are intented for those "who, due to the nature or severity of the disability, cannot, not yet, or not yet again be employed on the general labor market" (§219 (1) SGB IX) . For some years, they have been criticized primarily because of low transition rates to the general labor market. The sociopolitical consensus, which is also expressed in Germany's ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, aims to include people with disabilities in regular employment. Nevertheless, the number of workshops and the number of people supported there increased until recently. Studies indicate that this increase is primarily driven by people with psychological disabilities and young adults with so-called "learning disabilities" or "behavioral problems" who drop out of the transition system between school and work (Wüllenweber 2012). In addition, for young people with a mental disability, the path to a sheltered workshop after school still seems to be predetermined. The project proposed here wants to investigate the question of how the transition process to sheltered workshop for adolescents and young adults takes shape, how it is subjectively perceived, and what role is assigned to socio-medical and psychological reports.