As we know rehabilitation counseling is one of specializing field for counseling students. After earning basic on-campus or online counseling degree individuals may pursue specific training and education in the field to join profession of counseling as rehabilitation counselor. Qualified professionals will work on individuals having mental, emotional and physical disorders. They help such people to live independent life at home and on the work place.
Job Description of Rehabilitation Counselor
Rehabilitation counselors are well trained to counsel individual persons suffering from birth defects, illness, accidents and daily life stress. They guide them to enhance their capabilities to spend life independently with good employment. They also work in collaboration with health care facilities to treat patients in more efficient way that not only improve health conditions rather it also gives them courage to live normal life. Rehabilitation counselors assess individual client needs to design and apply rehabilitation activities like personal and vocational counseling, training and job placement options.
Primary Job Responsibilities and Duties of Rehabilitation Counselor
One third of the rehabilitation counselors may find jobs listed in state and federal service bulletins and get employed in public service organizations. Moreover, working as volunteer rehabilitation counselor will improve your chances to get permanent job with good salary. Individuals with higher degrees can become self employed consultants and director/in-charge of rehabilitation programs. Now day’s government and private sectors get more interested to support disable people offering them jobs to become productive member of society. This trend is directly improving employment opportunities for rehabilitation counselors.
Following are few important job responsibilities and duties of rehabilitation counselors.
•They assess individual client’s needs and capabilities by analyzing data collected from other consultants and diagnostic evaluations. They also interview patients and use their medical and educational records to design proper strategy for treatment.
•To better understand and assess client’s needs to develop rehabilitation plan, these professionals also arrange physical, mental, vocational and academic evaluation plans.
•After designing rehabilitation plan for individual clients, they also coordinate with client’s families for successful implementation of plan that covers behavioral, social, and residential and employment goals of clients.
•They talk with clients about their available options and goals to create rehabilitation plans to fulfill current needs.
•After developing rehabilitation program rehabilitation counselors also communicate with physicians, occupational therapist, psychologists and other related professionals to successful apply rehabilitation program.
•They also develop and sustain relationship with community organizations like schools and community groups and develop rehab plan that best fits on client’s abilities, education and physical abilities and career goals.
•Directing allowance for case service and acting as an authority to decide case expenses and payments.
•In order to resolve job placement problems and to assess satisfaction level of the candidate, rehab counselors maintain close contacts with clients during the whole job training and final appointment. Besides, they also monitor and document progress of clients to verify that rehabilitation plan was successful and all the goals and objective are met.
•Preparing and maintaining all case files, documents like client’s personal and educational information, work experience, client’s contact data and all other relevant correspondence record.
•Professionals also arrange on-site job training and helping devices like specially designed and equipped wheel chairs that support handicap persons to go to adjust to work and school environments.
•They also work in association with various agencies in communities to setup programs and facilities to help disable persons.
•They keep on doing research to develop improved diagnostic procedures to find out client’s needs and problem issues.
•They also locate hurdles in client’s way to get job and also formulate strategies to remove these problems. Most common barriers are rigid schedules, unreachable work sites and transport issues.
•Rehabilitation counselors also develop jobs and residency programs by contacting prospective employers. They provide complete guideline to get job and evaluate success of these employed clients.
Conclusion:
After reading this post we are able to conclude that a qualified rehabilitation counselor is capable to carry out all essential responsibilities to formulate rehabilitation counseling programs and activities to improve the life quality of handicap and disable citizens. They provide complete counseling and training to these individuals and their families and help them to face problems of life.
