California Brain Injury Injury Vocational Rehabilitation Lawyers
Traumatic Brain Injury Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment Information
Because victims of traumatic brain injuries show a wide variety of functional impairments, it is important to find a vocational rehabilitation counselor who has worked with brain injury clients. The vocational rehabilitation counselor’s role is to help improve the lives of their clients. Frequently, the only counselor brain injury clients see on a regular basis is a vocational rehabilitation counselor and with their help, many traumatic brain injury clients are able to find employment and lead independent lives.
Vocational rehabilitation counselors encounter a number of different types of problems that individuals with traumatic brain injury suffer from. Problems like:
- Cognitive problems – Difficulty with short-term memory, judgment, concentration, difficulty with processing new information, distractions, sequencing, sensory overload, or language abilities.
- Perceptual problems – Difficulty with vision, hearing, touch, time and space orientation, balance and increased sensitivity to pain.
- Physical problems – Difficulty with motor and physical skills, endurance/fatigue, speech, persistent headaches, sensitivity to light, hemiplegia (paralysis of one side of the body), or seizures.
- Behavioral/Emotional problems – Irritability, impatience, inability to control impulses, stress, understanding social cues, dependence/independence, initiation, self-awareness, mood swings or personality changes.
- Psychiatric problems – Problems ranging from depression and suicidal thoughts to auditory/visual hallucinations or paranoia.
Persons with TBI may also become frustrated and confused about what services are available and what agencies are offering these services, frustrated and confused to the point that they give up on some or all of these services. Because of the frequency of TBI patients to suffer from fatigue and not be very good at self-monitoring, it is important for vocational rehabilitation counselors to take into consideration factors such as fatigue when trying to place their clients in jobs.
Supports are so important to TBI patients that 75% of persons with TBI who return to work, eventually lose their job within 90 days if they do not have supports. Even individuals with TBI who have successfully returned to the workforce may need help later from a VR counselor when adapting to changes in life or in the workplace. TBI clients return to vocational rehabilitation for three common reasons:
- Loss of support system: Individuals with TBI oftentimes attend support and peer groups during rehabilitation, but these groups more often than not focus on recovery and adjustment. It is just as important to have support systems during employment and independent living. When there are no supports during this time, maintaining employment is difficulty.
- Change of job duties: Because job expectations and responsibilities change as do supervisors, VR counselors are able to help their clients work with new strategies to deal with job changes.
- Upward mobility: VR counselors are able to work with clients in re-examining their responsibilities and other factors that arise from successful job promotion.