Entrepreneurs of ourselves: When vocational rehabilitation is career development (and why that matters) Dr Joanna Fadyl Senior Lecturer: School of Clinical Sciences Deputy Director: Centre for Person Centred Research joanna.fadyl@aut.ac.nz
• Interdisciplinary health research centre based at AUT • Occupational therapy, physiotherapy, psychology, Director: sociology, speech therapy, policy, anthropology, Nicola Kayes nursing • International level research in rehabilitation and disability. • Understand personal experience and social context of Deputy Director: disability and rehabilitation Jo Fadyl • Facilitate engagement in rehabilitation and self- management of long term conditions https://cpcr.aut.ac.nz • Promote health, well-being and participation in a good quality of life for people experiencing disability • Develop strategies for timely and efficient knowledge translation of evidence into practice
Vocational rehabilitation research within the Centre (Lead: Fadyl) • Innovative inter-disciplinary research (across health & social sciences) • Embedded in end-user partnerships • Examine key social and political influences on real- world VR practices and outcomes • Addressing both local context and international trends
Examples of recent VR research • Work-ability Support Scale (Fadyl, McPherson, Turner- Stokes, Schluter): • Development of a tool for assessing work-ability in terms of the rehabilitation, modification and/or inter-dependence required to enable someone to work in a specific job • Developed in NZ community context, specifically for vocational rehabilitation practice • Tool and resources available on Research Centre website. • Role of societal understandings of ‘value’ in vocational rehabilitation (Fadyl, Payne, McPherson, Nicholls) • Sociological analysis of how wider social discourses regarding what is ‘valuable’ affect the opportunities available to individuals going through vocational rehabilitation • Summary of recent article in CDANZ Winter 2016 Ezine. • Aspect of this research theme part of today’s discussion
Current social context of vocational rehabilitation How we conceptualise work and disability in NZ society
Citizenship in the 21 st century: a multitude of responsible individuals
VR: Developing and contributing selves • Notion that work contributes to self development, and people contribute their self to society through work • Vocational rehab as a preserver / restorer of this process
Work in a ‘neo - liberal’ context • Worker ‘value’ is complex and variable • Not simply labour and time • Viewed in terms of what is valued in an employment ‘market’ • Employers and workers are ‘consumers’ of work and employment respectively. • Jobs are less ‘secure’ and employees want opportunities and flexibility • ‘ E mployability’ rather than commitment to a specific job that ensures continued employment
Disability reframed as qualification (value) “So many people talk about disability as a hindrance to working. I have found the opposite. Going to hell and back helped me to understand other people’s pain and has meant that in my chosen profession of Psychology I can connect with people in ways I never dreamed” (Lea Galvin, quoted in Verkaaik, 2009, p. 130). “Hire them. In general if someone has a disability, you’ll get tenacity and a strong work ethic. They’ve gone through the process of adjusting to their disability and working hard to minimise its impact, and that translates to hard work and loyalty.” (Kendall Akhurst’s advice to employers, Employers’ Disability Network, 2012b)
Disability as diversity; market responsiveness (consumers) “A disability confident business is a more efficient, more inclusive, forward- thinking organisation. In a tight labour market and a competitive market- place, disability confidence can give businesses an edge. Involving disabled people in product development, testing and marketing helps create products and services which work for everyone — critical in an ageing market. Businesses which make sure they really understand and welcome disabled people have better reputations with both the public and with the growing number of companies and public sector organisations that use diversity as a criteria for contracting and investment.” (Workbridge, 2012)
Concepts of ‘value’ within vocational rehabilitation Our sociological study
Conceptualising VR as manipulating worker ‘value’ • Research looking at the ways in which worker ’value’ is both conceptualised and manipuated in VR • Discourse analysis of approaches to VR in New Zealand & categorisation according to how they view and work with worker value: • Retaining ‘value’: Identifying and addressing ‘barriers to work’ • Investing to create ‘value’(e.g. supported employment) • Re- envisaging ‘value’ and identifying and/or creating employment niches Full description of study and findings available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.12212 (publisher version - journal subscription required) or: http://aut.researchgateway.ac.nz/handle/10292/8874 (submitted version - open access)
Retaining worker ’value’ • VR largely about identifying what is preventing an individual being able to work and addressing this through interventions • E.g. adaptation of workplace and/or job, employer and employee education, strategy use, rehabilitation. • Assessment of work dis/ability may focus on: • physical function • cognitive skills • social functioning • issues that affect work functioning outside job - e.g. family, emotional • Aim of intervention to minimise or eliminate the barriers preventing the individual being able to perform a specified job (ideally already held or skilled and experienced to do based on work history) • i.e . hindering their ‘value’ as an employee • Services evaluated by how efficiently and effectively they help the individual overcome these barriers • Examples of measures: time until return to work; work-ability for matched job
Investing to create worker ‘value’: example of supported employment • Supported employment approach varies across sector, distinguished by primacy of on-the-job learning and support. • Based getting individual into work environment and role quickly as key to empowerment and success • Worker not expected to be ‘work ready’ (able to do job) at time they start employment. • Job developer and Job coach and/or other support person aid in balancing employer’s needs to get job done and employee’s need for learning, experience, adaptation, strategy development • Enable the worker to achieve job tasks and productivity with support, and develop their skills and strategies, over time being able to work towards reducing support required. • Not required for the support to be eliminated within particular timeframe • Aim to enable people who experience significant disability access to mainstream jobs / workplaces • In this model, ‘value’ discussed in reference to investment: putting resource into creating an individual who is able to be a productive worker from someone who previously was not contributing in this way
Re- envisaging ‘value’ and identifying and/or creating employment niches • Focused on re- envisaging the experience of disablement as a shift in the ‘value’ that is offered in an employment market. • Old skills and abilities may be left behind, but new ones and the ‘value’ they offer are identified. • Process of ‘empowerment’: role of the vocational rehabilitation practitioner is to partner with or figuratively stand behind the individual to help them re-envisage / re-create their worker selves • Responsibility on the individual who is experiencing disability to ‘lead’ the re - envisioning process • Key aim not to see the disabled individual as diminished in their function or abilities, but enhanced in different ways – offering value in a way that may be unique • A ssumes ‘value’ is not strictly defined, and that it can be discovered or created.
Key implications for future directions at this stage of research programme • From case study analysis: • Engagement with vocational rehabilitation (VR) can often be a process of embodying a different worker identity – even when the injury or condition is not classed as ’major’ . • In our society, work identity and self identity are closely linked. Thus, VR can be seen as a process of becoming – of transforming one’s self. • From sociological analysis: • VR often characterised as purely ‘functional’ – addressing barriers to work rather than career development – BUT many emerging VR practices in NZ challenging this. • Occurs across the categories discussed – all of the three approaches to manipulating ‘value’ can vision VR as a process of becoming
What happens when we view vocational rehabilitation as a process of becoming ? A next stage of the inquiry …
Questions to consider as we do this exercise … • What are the opportunities and risks associated with this approach • For VR clients? • For VR practitioners? • For VR funders? • In what ways does this approach already view VR as a process of becoming ? • In what ways could this approach view VR as a process of becoming and how does it change the opportunities and constraints identified?
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