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 traumatic brain injury (TBI), individuals exhibit high unemployment rates, especially those persons with injuries of greater severity, a limited premorbid work history and/or persons from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Vocational rehabilitation programs have been developed to improve employability. Traditional vocational rehabilitation approaches, based on integrating work skills with cognitive rehabilitation models have proven only minimally effective with TBI. The supported employment model has been demonstrated to be much more effective with this group, as has an approach that combines vocational and psychosocial skills training along with job support. Even with these generally successful approaches, the literature on vocational rehabilitation in clients from economically disadvantaged environments who are diagnosed with TBI is limited. An approach for the economically disadvantaged, which combines work skills training in a real work community along with supported employment is presented.