Counseling the Handicapped: An Annotated Bibliography for Children, Counselors, and Parents

In the 1970s, the United States Congress enacted two statutes that have had dramatic and far‐reaching effects on the education of handicapped children by public schools. These two laws, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Education For All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (known as Public Law 94–142), have required local public school agencies to provide new eductional programs for thousands of handicapped children not previously served by the public schools. Counselors, principals, and teachers were quickly informed of the law's requirements and willingly began the task of main‐streaming and assimilating these children into various curricula. Their physical needs were attended to rapidly; their societal and emotional needs, unfortunately, lagged behind. Within the past seven years, there has been an increase in books, articles, and films specifically addressed to counseling the handicapped. Unlike past literature which focused only on the vocational aspect of rehabilitation counseling, current writing emphasizes personal counseling meant to assist a disabled child to participate fully in the problems and joys of daily living.