2.4.2.2. Linking the “living and working environment” without offering alternatives is impermissible For most of us, work plays an important role in life, as it is a means of earning a living. But work also involves challenging oneself, proving oneself, making new contacts and friendships, and many other things. It is a fact that people with disabilities face discrimination when accessing the regular labour market. But when it comes to programmes designed to help persons with learning difficulties and/or disabilities to enter or re-enter the professional world, there are additional barriers, especially for those who are not considered “severely disabled”. This is because they may need more time and/or specific support to be able to make an equivalent contribution. The situation is particularly difficult for persons with learning disabilities or chronic psychiatric illnesses who are already living in an institutional environment and, in the realm of work, have been integrated into the world of occupational therapy workshops. One of the programmatically defined objectives is to help individuals transition from this protected world into the regular labour market or the intermediate labour market (occupational projects, integrative operations). Nevertheless, in practice those objectives are not achieved often enough. There are various causes. One is that residential arrangements and arrangements regarding working in sheltered workshops are often handled by the same entity, which means that the two areas are very closely intertwined. In all of the Laender, during visits the commissions observed that residential places in facilities and sheltered workshops attended by clients are often closely interlinked. In many cases, residential homes and day workshops are operated by the same operator organisation; in some cases, both types of facility are actually in the same building or directly adjacent. Residential places and day workshops often closely interlinked Even though the organisations which support residential structures and those which support work structures exclusively for persons with disabilities are not identical, there are many regions in Austria where de facto there is only one residential home and one day structure available. There are no options or freedom of choice. If residential places are usually interlinked with having to perform work at a shelter workshop operated by the same organisation, it is fair to assume that there is at least implicit pressure to attend that workshop. This is true especially because in many cases residential facilities are unstaffed or staffed with reduced personnel during the day. Commissions frequently observed that clients often lack social contact with the outside world and move in closed social circles. If an operator organisation offers a residential place as well as a day structure, the individual in question de facto lives within a very narrow control Individuals living within closed systems 81