Vocational Rehabilitation Services- VCU RRTC Webinar

Описание: To see VCU RRTC's full webinar on Vocational Rehabilitation Services for Individuals with Physical Disabilities, go to    • Vocational Rehabilitation Services for Ind...  
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TRANSCRIPT

Jim:
My name is Jim Rothrock, and I’m the commissioner at the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services in Richmond, Virginia.

Uh, I’ve been asked by VCU RRTC to come to you today and give you, maybe, some insights on how a person with a physical disability might be able to be best benefit from the vocational rehabilitation program around the United States.

We have an array of services, and people with physical disabilities just need to find out where our services are.

The basic model works very simply. An individual can go to a website. In Virginia, you can Google the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services and fairly quickly, in an accessible format, be able to find an office next to them and call that office or go to that office and say, “Hello, my name is Jim Rothrock. I’m here to learn more about vocational rehabilitation.”

Some things that you can put together: Um, vocational information, medical information if you’ve got a physical disability, updated and current information so that you can demonstrate the situation, the barriers that you need, uh, assistance to overcome.

Putting that package together. Um, scheduling a time to meet with your counselor and going over what your goals are. Um, and I strongly encourage you to do that pre-thinking.

Uh, too often we have clients coming in looking for stuff, looking for help and not really have started the process by which they say, you know, “What do I want to do with my life? What type of work do I want to do?”

Um, so, so it’s important for the individual to begin to have that discussion with themselves.

We’re doing more and more in the commonwealth and across the nation with getting to youngsters with both intellectual disabilities, physical disabilities and mental disabilities to try to begin this exploration process and beginning that discussion then because the more that one can think about the type of work that they would like to do, the better off they’re going to be.

So try to have as much of that, uh, going on in your mind. But go to the, uh, the office, establish a relationship. Let them know that, that you do have a disabling condition.

That, uh, you hopefully have some medical information that will explain it or have a doctor that could readily provide that information, um, because we will need to see that.

And then begin to do the really critical piece… is working with your counselor to develop a, uh, individualized plan for employment.

Again, they will typically have long and short-term goals. They’ll assign different, uh, services that will be provided and, um, be able to really do a road map, be it for six months or six years, to see where you want to go and what you’re going to need to get, to get the job that you think you have a good fit for.

Uh, and then it’s our job to look up how we can pay for that in the most effective way.

Narrator:
DARS thanks VCU RRTC for providing this video and allowing us to share it with our audience.