From its inception in 1920 with the passage of Public Law 236, 66th Congress, the purpose of the vocational rehabilitation program has been to assist the States, by means of grants-in-aid, to return disabled men and women to productive, gainful employment. The authority for the program was renewed several times until the vocational rehabilitation program was made permanent as Title 5, of the Social Security Act in 1935. Up to this time and for the next eight years, the services provided disabled persons consisted mainly of training, counseling, and placement on a job. Recognizing the limitations of such a program, the 78th Congress in 1943 passed P. L. 113, which broadened the concept of rehabilitation to include the provision of physical restoration services to remove or reduce disabilities, and which revised the financing structure.

Despite the successful rehabilitation of over a half million disabled persons in the first eleven years after 1943, the existing program was still seen to be inadequate to cope with the nation's backlog of an estimated two million disabled. To assist the States, therefore, in rehabilitating handicapped individuals, ``so that they may prepare for and engage in remunerative employment to the extent of their capabilities,'' the 83rd Congress enacted the Vocational Rehabilitation Amendments of 1954 (P. L. 565). These amendments to the Vocational Rehabilitation Act were designed to help provide for more specialized rehabilitation facilities, for more sheltered and ``half-way'' workshops, for greater numbers of adequately trained personnel, for more comprehensive services to individuals (particularly to the homebound and the blind), and for other administrative improvements to increase the program's overall effectiveness.