At Easy Coffee inside the Shantao Temple MRT station (善導寺站), Lin Chien-hsuan (林建炫) serves coffee every morning to the rush hour crowd. At first glance, one would never suspect that he is a mentally disabled patient who couldn't converse with people when first starting work at the coffee shop.
"I've been here for over four years. Sometimes I still forget things and need the instructor's helps. And there are more and more products to remember now ... But I think I'll stay and keep working here," said the shy, retiring 28-year-old employee.
Run by the Taipei Mental Rehabilitation Association (TMRA, 台北市康復之友協會), Easy Coffee is one of dozens of sheltered workshops commissioned by the Department of Labor (勞工局) of the Taipei City Government that offers a supportive environment where physically and mentally disabled people can acquire vocational experience and job skills.
Having worked with schizophrenics and manic-depressives with stabilized symptoms for four years at the coffee shop, the association's training instructor Chen Hsuan-chia (陳萱佳) said the biggest challenge the employees have to overcome is interpersonal interaction, as they are socially backward when taking the first step out of families and hospitals. He said that a long training phase is needed to help them regain confidence and learn to react to others.
Peer support, as well as care and guidance from trained instructors, is essential to adaptation to the workplace. "Our student-employees are under tremendous pressure since lots of our clients are office workers who are in a rush and don't have much patience … They often want to give up and it's our job to guide them from thinking 'I want to give up' to 'I am tired and need a break.' With practice, they are able to deal with the stress and make the mental transition themselves," said Chen.
What sets Easy Coffee apart from other more protection-oriented sheltered workshops is its goal, which is to open itself to market competition and encourage the disabled to work in a place where people come for good services and products rather than out of sympathy.
This strategy has been adopted by 12 Baskets (十 二個籃子), a sheltered restaurant on Heping East Road (和平東路) near Linkuang MRT station (麟光站) and run by the Chinese National Association of the Deaf (中華民國聽障人協會) with five hearing-impaired and mentally handicapped employees.
"I often tell staff to think about this place as the last stop before stepping into real a work place," said employment instructor Chen Wei-ting (陳維廷), adding that they are also reluctant to advertise the restaurant as a sheltered store since "buying cookies made by anonymous disabled people is one thing, but being served by them face to face is another."
In Chen Wei-ting's opinion, though social interaction is the biggest issue to be tackled, every hired disable individual has his or her own story, problems and demons to fight.
"I once had a schizophrenic working here. Though he was under medication, there was always a voice in his head saying 'I am not normal and that's why I am here' … He didn't make it in the end," she said.
Although the simple tasks required may take most people only a few day to pick up, the training time at 12 Baskets ranges from three to five months, as even one simple step has to be repeatedly practiced.
"But you never give up. No matter what method you take to teach them, you never give up on them because they'll learn eventually," Chen stressed.
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