We've spoken a lot about vocational rehabilitation here at RTW Matters, and heard stories from people who've successfully come through the process and returned to sustainable employment.

Vocational rehabilitation is also known as workplace or occupational rehabilitation. 

The concept encompasses more than one thing. Taken as being simply about healthcare, vocational rehabilitation is less effective than it could otherwise be. It should include a company's positive and flexible approach to helping its sick or injured workers. “There is strong evidence that proactive company approaches to sickness, together with the temporary provision of modified work and accommodations, are effective and cost-effective,” write Gordon Waddell, Kim Burton and Nick Kendall in their article ‘Vocational Rehabilitation: What works, for whom, and when'. They argue that evidence concludes that “effective vocational rehabilitation depends on work-focused healthcare and accommodating workplaces. Both are necessary: they are inter-dependent and must be coordinated.”

Waddell et al define vocational rehabilitation as “whatever helps someone with a health problem to stay at, return to and remain in work: it is an idea and an approach as much as an intervention or a service.”

Early intervention is central to vocational rehabilitation. The longer anyone is off work, the more vocational rehabilitation resembles a steep uphill battle. There is less cost involved, fewer psychological barriers, and fewer physical barriers to early rehabilitation.

Effective vocational rehabilitation depends on communication and coordination between the individual, healthcare, and the workplace. Vocational rehabilitation assists workers to understand, compensate for and manage their injury or disability by building work capacity and/or developing new work strategies to avoid re-injury.

The Australian Government has described vocational rehabilitation as including assessing of the impact an injury, disability or health condition is having on someone's ability to gain or maintain sustainable employment; identifying and delivering vocational rehabilitation interventions and strategies to manage their injury, disability or health condition in order to achieve a safe return to work; vocational counselling and planning; training and work trials; job search and job placement assistance; and assistance with job design, workplace assessments and modifications.

Vocational rehabilitation is about helping an injured worker to understand and manage their injury, learn to work with any limitations from the injury, and prevent any further damage from occurring. Consequently, it's important that the rehabilitation provider has a strong understanding of the worker's role and its physical and mental demands so that help and recommendations can be as accurate as possible. This is why providers need to work closely with employees and employers, to ensure safe and sustainable employment opportunities.