[Employment support for persons with acquired brain damage: the Mutabor concept]

Employment Support seeks to devise solutions for clients who fail to make fullest possible use of their resources for example in work routines or in the context of rehabilitative opportunities. The services provided are intended to support less severely impaired participants in returning to work and, above all, to maintain existing employment, but also try to reach out to individuals with medium or very severe impairment. This target group is characterized by a broad variety of combinations in terms of motor, cognitive and sensory impairments, frequently aggravated by the difficulties of illness coping. Their problems demand broad-based, multi-faceted case management, along with a high measure of practical support. The solutions to be devised have to be tailored to the individual, and support and coaching measures need to be given for longer than could normally be realized by clinical and vocational rehabilitation programmes. Also, crisis intervention services must be available also for relief of the workplace environment. Many of these clients being unable to transfer the experience made in a therapeutic setting to their respective everyday situations, the necessary experience has to be enabled as closely related to real life as possible, facilitating acquisition and training of appropriate alternative behaviours. Mutabor hence is linking employment support with its day centre and intensive ambulatory coaching, which enables better differentiation of the employment support services offered to individual clients, without extra cost to the financially responsible agency.