COMMUNITY-BASED TRAINING AND EMPLOYMENT - AN EFFECTIVE PROGRAM FOR PERSONS WITH TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY

Occupational entry is an important issue for persons with disabilities , as many become or remain unemployed after their injury. After trauma tic brain injury (TBI), individuals exhibit high unemployment rates, e specially those persons with injuries of greater severity, a limited p remorbid work history and/or persons from economically disadvantaged b ackgrounds. Vocational rehabilitation programs have been developed to improve employability. Traditional vocational rehabilitation approache s, based on integrating work skills with cognitive rehabilitation mode ls have proven only minimally effective with TBI. The supported employ ment model has been demonstrated to be much more effective with this g roup, as has an approach that combines vocational and psychosocial ski lls training along with job support. Even with these generally success ful approaches, the literature on vocational rehabilitation in clients from economically disadvantaged environments who are diagnosed with T BI is limited. An approach for the economically disadvantaged, which c ombines work skills training in a real work community along with suppo rted employment is presented. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd.