Empowering people beside disabilities through vocational rehabilitation counseling

As a result of systemic "castification" (1) processes and the rapidly varying world of work, assisting people beside disabilities with obtain and maintaining first-class employment is an increasingly difficult task. Vocational rehabilitation (VR) counseling thus can be instrumental for enhancing the craft success and aspect of life of consumers next to disabilities. In this article, a framework that describes how effective VR counseling promotes the empowerment of consumers beside disabilities is presented. Following a description of the primary model constructs of working alliance, informed choice, self-determination, and empowerment, the implications of the framework for VR counselor training and practice are discussed.

The world of work is varying at a rapid gait, and the changes are credible to accelerate during the 21st century. Employment arrangements such as makeshift employment, short-term hires, contractual positions, leased workers, and on-call and unpaid workers have and will verbs to influence the career nouns of all workers (Institute on Rehabilitation Issues, 1999). These change are having a substantial impact on the energy roles of individuals with disabilities, the settings where they live and work and the events that occur contained by their lives. At the same time, current disability policy surrounded by the United States focuses on the inclusion, independence and empowerment of ethnic group with disabilities (Kosciulek, 2000). Thus, vocational rehabilitation (VR) counseling beside people near disabilities must be a dynamic, creative and highly individualized process. Effective VR counseling can be instrumental for empower the life choices, inclusion and nouns of people near disabilities. In turn, empowerment, inclusion and independence will organize to high-quality employment and fulfilling career for individuals with disabilities (O'Day, 1999).

EMPLOYMENT AND CAREER CHALLENGES ENCOUNTERED BY PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

The ever-changing disposition of work presents new problems for ancestors with disabilities contained by finding and maintaining suitable employment. Major trends such as globalization of the American cutback, technology and population shifts are changing the quality of work and worker skill requirements (Ryan, 1995). Despite rehabilitation efforts, a majority of Americans next to disabilities between the ages of 16 and 64 are not employed and that disparity has not changed since 1986, despite the reality that a majority of non-employed people near disabilities in the working age population want to work (National Organization on Disability, 2000). In standard, the vocational adjustment of people beside disabilities has be characterized by limited salable work skills, low income, underemployment and laying-off (Bruyere et al., 2002; Curnow, 1989).

In addition, according to Harrington (1997), lofty school students beside disabilities frequently leave arts school without marketable skills or the potential to function independently. Given that work is a central force contained by people's lives, dramatically glorious rates of unemployment and underemployment can adversely affect not one and only the economic and social status of individuals near disabilities, but also their self-image. A distinct set of employment and career challenge encountered by lots people next to disabilities that can be used as a reference point for VR counselors includes:

* limitations in rash life experiences,

* occupation decision-making difficulties, and

* a distrustful worker self-concept (Kosciulek, 2003).

Limitations in Early Experiences. Frequently, those with disabilities arrive at prime of life with few trade options (Chubon, 1995). Limited impulsive vocational and social experiences encountered by ethnic group with disabilities restrict the array of occupation options they perceive, impede administrative ability and impair adjectives vocational development. The effect of restricted early vocational experiences have been described by Holland (1985) as a precursor to the nouns of career-related problems. Such problems may include failing to develop a consistent and differentiated personality model and a clear vocational identity and trying to make a craft of a job that does not contest their abilities or experiences (Holland, 1985). Unfortunately, such developmental pattern are not unusual among people near disabilities.

Decision-Making Ability. Lack of opportunities to play a part in conclusion making, to form a perception of oneself as a worker and to test self-competencies can be the outcome of controlled early experiences and can impede occupation development. The poorly defined self-concept, ambivalence nearly obtaining work and set occupational information reported by individuals with disabilities is indicative of distortions that could result in unrealistic vocational aspirations or decision. Harrington (1997) and Parent (1993) have aptly described how oodles individuals with disabilities own had little opportunity for successful experience within decision making and, so, lack competence surrounded by making decisions.

Negative Worker Self-Concept Resulting from Castification Processes. Lack of experience and difficulty in declaration making are not solely the result of disability, but also an outcome of social attitudes and stereotypes. Social attitudes toward disability may be as important as the disability itself contained by that the negative attitude of others plays a piece in shaping the vivacity role of the individual with disability (Fitch, 2002). The outcome of this long-term exposure to prejudicial attitudes may result surrounded by a negative self-appraisal and a unenthusiastic worker self-concept.

Society generally holds diminished expectations for family with disabilities (Schroeder, 1995). These attitudes are pervasive; they influence adjectives of us to some degree. As a class, ethnic group with disabilities own suffered discrimination. Individuals next to disabilities face adjectives social problems of stigma, marginality and discrimination, similar to those face by members of tribal and ethnic minority groups (Fine & Asch, 1988). Further, given that disability rates among racial and ethnic minority group member are proportionally higher than rates surrounded by the U.S. population overall, many individuals near disabilities face double jeopardy (Trueba, 1993).

Szymanski and Trueba (1994) maintain that at least some of the difficulties face by people beside disabilities are not the result of functional impairments related to the disability, but rather are the result of castification processes inbuilt in societal institutions for rehabilitation and coaching and enforced by well-meaning professionals. Castification processes have their roots surrounded by a determinist view contained by which people who are different are view as somehow less "human" or smaller number capable (Trueba, Cheng & Ima, 1993). Problems of castification plague services to ethnic group with disabilities because equal categories of impairment and functional restriction (constructed mostly by people short disabilities) are used to determine eligibility for services, to prescribe interventions and, on occasion, to explain letdown. The constructs and those who use them become agents of castification.

The disempowering nature of these classification systems is repeatedly all too adjectives to people near disabilities applying for rehabilitation services in an effort to enhance self-sufficiency and personal nouns (Scotch, 2000). Rather than being treated as adults next to free or equal status, they may be confronted by persons asserting a right to determine what kind of services they need. Thus, it is critically impressive that VR counselors reject paternalistic castification processes and actively work to foster empowerment among consumers with disabilities during the VR process (Kosciulek, 2003). To accomplish this key task, we call for conceptual frameworks useful for concerned and guiding empowering VR counseling approaches.

VOCATIONAL REHABILITATION COUNSELING EMPOWERMENT FRAMEWORK

In this slice, a framework that describes how VR counseling engenders the empowerment of consumers next to disabilities is presented. The key constructs contained by this model include the VR counselor-consumer working alliance, informed choice, self-determination and empowerment. Figure 1, a visual depiction of the empower VR counseling framework, illustrates the following conceptualization:

A consumer near a disability enters
the state-federal VR system. The
horizontal and quality of the working alliance
formed between the VR
counselor and consumer determines
the stratum and quality of consumer informed
choice and self-determination
during the VR process. Together, informed
choice and self-determination
influence the horizontal and quality of consumer
empowerment resulting from
the VR process.

In this model, it is hypothesized that the nouns of an effective counselor-consumer working alliance is a prerequisite for facilitate consumer informed choice and self-determination during the VR process. Further, the framework posits that proficient informed choice and self-determination are necessary for increasing consumer empowerment. In writ to enhance reader understanding and application of the VR counseling empowerment framework, respectively of the model constructs is defined and described in detail below.

Counselor-Client Working Alliance. The central factor surrounded by all successful counseling processes, including VR counseling, is an decisive working alliance. Researchers estimate that as much as 30 percent of the variance in counseling outcome can be attributed to the counselor-client working alliance (Lambert, 1992). As one of the essential components for success within counseling, an effective working alliance is represented by a positive collaboration between a consumer and a counselor (Kosciulek, Chan, Lustig, Strauser & Pichette, 2001). The working alliance is comprised of the following components: tasks, bonds and goal (Horvath, 1994).

Tasks are those in-counseling behaviors and cognitions that form the substance of the counseling process.

Goals are the outcomes or target of the counseling process. In VR counseling, the goal aspect of the working alliance is clear and specific: the attainment of an employment outcome.

Bonds are the positive interpersonal attachments between a consumer and counselor that include such aspects as mutual trust, implementation and confidence.

Consistent with the working alliance concept, counseling in VR is the collaborative process between the individual consumer and counselor where they assess the individual's strengths, resources, priorities, abilities, capability, interests and rehabilitation needs. In this process, the counselor and consumer also explore, clarify and assess employment and job options, address barrier to be overcome, and develop and carry out a plan of dealing that will result in shrewd employment for the individual based on his or her informed choice. In discussing the working alliance in the VR process, Lustig, Strauser, Rice and Rucker (2002) noted that the two most significant factor in this kingdom are the quality of the consumer's contribution and the degree to which the consumer is motivated, unavailable and joined contained by the VR process. Consumers with disabilities who are busy and connected with counselors will benefit most from VR counseling (Chan, Shaw, McMahon, Koch & Strauser, 1997).

The working alliance can be most beneficial and an excellent predictor of outcome for consumers next to disabilities when:

* counselors and consumers agree on goals and preferred outcomes,

* counselors collaborate next to consumers on tasks to accomplish those goals and preferred outcomes (Lustig et al., 2002), and

* consumers hold a favorable view of the counselor-consumer relationship (Bertolino & O'Hanlon, 2002).

An empowerment approach to forming an potent VR counselor-consumer working alliance includes elements that both consumers and counselors bring to the relationship. Primary elements for consumers include taking responsibility for their own decision making and for their own appointments and consequences of their actions. Key elements for counselors include the following: knowing and admit their limitations (e.g., lack of fluency of a specific disability condition) and displaying unconditional positive regard for the consumers they serve (National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research [NIDRR], 1994).

Specific counseling technique that contribute to the development of an forceful working alliance and consumer empowerment include the following:

* treating all consumers as adults regardless of the severity of the disability,

* using age-appropriate language and technique,

* placing emphasis on consumer strengths, and

* respecting consumer values and beliefs.

Consumer Informed Choice. As employment is a knob to independence and better quality of duration for people near disabilities, choice in the screening of employment goals and rehabilitation services vital to meet those goal is a critical element for empower persons beside disabilities (Kosciulek, 2000). In the VR counseling empowerment framework it is hypothesized that an effective counselor-consumer working alliance lead to productive informed choice in the VR process. Consumer choice in vocational goals and services emerge as an important component of VR contained by the 1990s. However, choice is not a new concept surrounded by the field. Over 40 years ago, Levine (1959) described the partnership between the consumer and counselor and the counselor's role in assisting the individual in making choices and decision. During this same time period, Patterson (1960) pressed counselors to facilitate independence by helping consumers "run through the process" of deciding what they should hold and should do. He noted, "The counselor can have no stereotypes of employment choices" (p. 115). Both of these examples focus on vocational choice and, although they go subsidise more than 40 years, they are consistent with current principles related to enhancing the counselor-consumer partnership, facilitate empowerment and fostering choice and independence within the rehabilitation process.

The philosophy behind informed choice is that race with disabilities should own control over the processes and services that affect their lives, and that those who have control over their own VR planning will experience better employment outcomes than those who do not. Informed choice is practiced when VR counselors afford consumers with disabilities

* the tools to swot how to make choices, and

* the information they inevitability to make their own choices.

Informed choice is the process by which individuals participating in VR programs breed decisions in the order of their assessment services, vocational goals, the services and the service providers that are mandatory to reach those goal and how those services will be procured. The informed choice process begins beside the individual's values, interests and characteristics and proceeds to an evaluation of availability of resources and alternatives, including the labor market. Implementing informed choice requires that the VR counselor listen carefully, communicates clearly and gather and analyzes information without bias. The VR counselor works beside the consumer to make choices and to evaluate their impact. Finally, in an informed-choice model of VR, the counselor supports the individual in setting goal, making plans and following through with decision, with the aim of achieve meaningful employment.

It is presumed that a consumer's skills and ability to exercise informed choice can be developed through use of self-assessment techniques, training and experience in aim setting and decision making, and consumer schooling. In this manner, skills surrounded by exercising informed choice could grow in a parallel fashion along next to growth of specific vocational and employment skills, enabling the individual to verbs making important, informed vivacity decisions following the completion of VR services. The application of the concept of consumer informed choice in the context of VR services involves a conscious process of choice making near the following typical elements:

* analyzing needs,

* get-together information,

* evaluating the information,

* describing options,

* select from among the options and making a choice,

* accepting the risk of letdown,

* assuming responsibility for the outcome of the choice, and

* evaluating the results of choice making and using the information in future choice-making experiences.

Consumer Self-Determination. In accessory to facilitating informed choice in the VR process, an decisive VR counselor-consumer working alliance will enable the nouns of consumer self-determination skills. Self-determination, a concept and process that has emerge from the fields of rehabilitation counseling, special childhood and disability studies, provides the basis for an empowerment approach to VR counseling. Field, Hoffman and Spezia (1998) hold defined self-determination as a multidimensional concept that includes:

* attitudes, abilities and skills that organize people near disabilities to define goal for themselves and to take the initiative to get these goals,

* the dimensions to choose and to have those choices be the determinants of one's schedule,

* determination of one's own fate or course of deed without nouns, and

* the ability to set down and achieve goal based on a foundation of knowing and value oneself.

Promoting self-determination should be a primary effort of VR counselors working next to consumers with disabilities. Self-determination can be enhanced by helping consumers develop greater self-awareness and by learning decision making, goal-setting and negotiation skills, which will see them to exercise greater control during the VR counseling process (Kosciulek, Bruyere & Rosenthal, 2002). The steps in the self-determination development process for consumers include consumers knowing and value themselves, consumer planning, consumer action, experiencing outcomes and study, and making adjustments. Consumer self-knowledge can be facilitate by encouraging individuals to expand their thinking about the possibilities within their life, decide what is truly important to them, have a keen sense of their strengths, limitations and preferences and knowing what option are available. VR counselors can promote consumer self-valuing by assisting consumers with accepting themselves as they are, laudatory their strengths that come from uniqueness, and recognize and respecting their rights and responsibilities.

The next step contained by the consumer self-determination process is the development of efficient planning skills. Effective planning involves a process of setting goals, identify action steps to congregate goals, anticipating results and visually and in words rehearsing potentially stressful events such as job interviews. In assimilation to planning, VR counselors can facilitate consumer self-determination by encouraging individuals to act. Consumer self-determined doings may include dealing directly with conflict and criticism (e.g., beside a family associate or coworker) and accessing resources and supports such as assistive technology devices and rest and leisure services.

As a result of planning and acting, consumers next to disabilities will have the opportunity to experience positive outcomes and to revise more about themselves. VR counseling that promotes self-determination can see individuals to compare performance and outcomes to their expectations and realize successes. In the final step toward enhancing consumer self-determination, VR counselors can assist individuals near disabilities to adjust their self-perception and expectations with respect to future planning and activities.

Consumer Empowerment. As illustrated within the VR counseling empowerment framework (Figure 1), informed choice and self-determination influence the level and level of consumer empowerment resulting from the VR process. Emener (1991) described the philosophical tenets necessary for an empowerment approach to rehabilitation. These tenets provide a adjectives foundation for the provision of VR counseling services to people beside disabilities. The four tenets are paraphrased as follows:

* Each individual is of great worth and dignity.

* Every soul should have equal opportunity to maximize his or her potential and is deserving of societal assist in attempting to do so.

* Most citizens strive to grow and change surrounded by positive directions.

* Individuals should be free to make their own decision about the running of their lives.

Definition of empowerment. Empowerment is the process by which people who own been rendered powerless or marginalized develop the skills to hold control of their lives and their environment (Lee, 1997). As such, in proclaim to begin to remodel rehabilitation services and outcomes, empowerment has become the operative occupancy in disability policy nouns and rehabilitation service delivery. The pen of rehabilitation continues to place an increasing emphasis on the construct of empowerment as a conceptual cornerstone of identity (Banja, 1990; Zimmerman & Warschausky, 1998) and critical erratic in rehabilitation research (National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research [NIDRR], 1991).

Empowerment is conceptualized as involving both internal or psychological aspects and situational or social aspects. Internal or psychological factor include a sense of control, competence, confidence, responsibility, participation, solidarity and community. Additional psychological aspects of empowerment include flexibility, initiative and adjectives orientation (Stein, 1997). In this demeanour, the psychological facet of empowerment entails the achievement of values and attitudes that are incorporated into the individual's worldview and constitute a foundation for action (Bolton & Brookings, 1996).

Situational or social aspects of empowerment include control over resources; interpersonal, work and organizational skills; supervisory powers; self-sufficiency; mobility; and "savvy" or an ability to "capture around" in society (Stein, 1997). Additional situational factor include improved living conditions, increased social status, financial and social support, autonomy, access to information and income. The situational aspects of empowerment are concerned near the interdependence between people's behaviors and their environment. These situational or social factor also suggest that the lack of social, monetary, or political resources in the environment is a most important contributor to human dysfunction (Rappaport, 1987). Thus, it is argued here that when people next to disabilities have control over significant resources, they are better able to determine the course of their lives, solve their problems and develop adaptive social networks.

Empowering VR counseling. Empowerment of individuals beside disabilities means that they hold the same level of control over their lives and the conditions that affect them as is generally possessed by race without disabilities (Harp, 1994). It entail the transfer of power and control over their lives from external entities, such as VR counselors, to the individuals themselves (Bolton & Brookings, 1996). Thus, as hypothesized and tested by Kosciulek and Merz (2001), the VR counselor committed to an empowerment approach to service assignment should facilitate and maximize opportunities for individuals beside disabilities to have control and authority over their own lives.

From an empowerment perspective, VR counseling is not something that can be done to or for a consumer. Rather, it is a process where consumers must become active, informed participant who learn and control a planning process that they use for short-and long-term trade development (Szymanski, Hershenson, Enright & Ettinger, 1996). In accumulation, the lifelong, developmental nature of the process channel "unless we plan to work with an increasingly dependent consumer again and again across the decades, our professional responsibility is to assure that respectively person learn the [career planning] process" (Mastie, 1994, p. 37).

Active consumer involvement is the key component of successful VR counseling interventions (Ettinger, Conyers, Merz & Koch, 1995). In an empowerment approach to VR counseling, consumers are actively involved in: gathering information, including self-assessment, and erudition about occupation and the labor market; generate alternative courses of action and weigh those alternatives; and formulating a plan of action.

IMPLICATIONS FOR VOCATIONAL REHABILITATION COUNSELOR TRAINING AND PRACTICE

The VR counseling empowerment framework suggests three noteworthy implications for VR counselor training and practice.

First, in both pre-service counselor rearing and in-service counselor training programs, curricula must focus on the development of potent vocational counseling techniques. In this demeanour, new and practicing VR counselors will possess the tools crucial for developing effective working alliances beside consumers with disabilities.

Second, both fresh and experienced VR counselors must be knowledgeable of the state-federal VR system informed choice mandate. Further, counselors must be fully informed regarding those models demonstrated to be adjectives for enhancing informed consumer choice in the VR process. The informed choice/best-practice methods described in the Choice Demonstrations Projects Operations Manual (InfoUse, 1999) may be helpful within this regard.

Third, surrounded by accordance with the VR counseling empowerment framework, the nouns of consumer self-determination skills must be a goal of the VR counseling process. As such, VR counselor training programs of adjectives types should direct resources toward increasing counselor knowledge and skill within the area of consumer self-determination. As described before in the discussion of Consumer Self-Determination, Field et al. (1998) provided a advisable guide that outlines the steps in the self-determination development process.

CONCLUSION

Due to the ever-changing moral fibre of the world of work and service-system castification processes, assisting people near disabilities to achieve positive, shrewd and stimulating career nouns can be a challenging project. Effective VR counseling can be instrumental for enhancing the career nouns and quality of go of consumers with disabilities. Full carrying out of the VR counseling empowerment framework presented in this article will see consumers with disabilities to become involved, informed participants who revise and control a planning process that they use for both short- and long-term career nouns. In this manner, VR counseling will promote the empowerment of individuals next to disabilities.

NOTE

(1.) Castification is fundamentally an institutionalized way of exploiting one social group (ethnic, tribal, low-income or other minority group), thus reducing this group to the status of a lower caste that cannot enjoy like rights and obligations possessed by the other groups (Trueba, 1993, p. 30).