5/1/2007

By Meaghan Agnew

When Dickens wrote that “change begets change,” he may well have been foretelling the professional achievements of Jim Cassetta MPA ’72. As president and CEO of Work Inc., a Quincy, MA-based nonprofit rehabilitation facility working to employ adults with mental and physical disabilities, Cassetta has brought economic security and personal dignity to an often undervalued population. In the process, he is challenging accepted understandings of what it means to be disabled.

“The treatment system does not recognize that vocational rehabilitative services—job training, placement, education, etc.—can be viable outcomes, and as a result, the payment system—insurance, Medicaid, Medicare—is geared toward treatment and not jobs and recovery,” Cassetta explains, adding that the unemployment rate among capable, disabled adults currently sits at 70 percent.

Thirty years on the frontlines of human services led Cassetta to believe that work was part of the treatment equation. “I saw,” Cassetta says, “that the public system needed to invest in employment.”

One local organization making that investment was Work Inc., which Casetta joined five years ago. Founded in 1965, the nonprofit provides employment services and opportunities to individuals with mental and physical disabilities such as mental retardation, chronic mental illness, cerebral palsy, autism, sensory impairments, and epilepsy.

At Work Inc., adults obtain the practical tools necessary to achieve economic independence, and earn competitive wages in clerical, janitorial and administrative roles at corporations such as Stop & Shop, Home Depot, Sears and Teradyne; in return, they gain dignity and self-sufficiency and become part of a community that promotes and maximizes their skills and interests.

Under Cassetta’s leadership, Work Inc. has grown in both size and ambition. The nonprofit’s operating budget has increased from $15 million to $21 million per year.

Cassetta’s ultimate goal is a world in which mental disabilities are treated like any other chronic illness—conditions that can be treated, managed, and overcome—in large part through gainful employment. “I’m not sure in my lifetime if we’ll see the Mecca,” says Cassetta, “but we’re heading in the right direction.”

The full version of this article originally appeared in the Winter 2007 issue of Suffolk Alumni Magazine. 

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