Rehabilitation of the disabled means a service that makes physical, mental, social, vocational and economical available capacities of the disabled recovered to the highest degree. It can be classified into medical, educational, social, psychological, ...
Rehabilitation of the disabled means a service that makes physical, mental, social, vocational and economical available capacities of the disabled recovered to the highest degree. It can be classified into medical, educational, social, psychological, and vocational rehabilitation, etc. Among them, vocational rehabilitation means a process that helps the disabled to return to worker's positions completely and to participate in work while enabling them to display their capabilities, by developing the residual abilities of the psychological and physical handicapped to the utmost and by providing consistent and integrated services.
Like this, the vocational rehabilitation becomes the most important core in many rehabilitations of the disabled. Therefore, it can be known that it is more important than any other to check the ability and requirement of the handicapped and provide them appropriate services. Ultimately, all efforts should be concentrated on improving the "quality of life" of the disabled.
Accordingly, this writer intends to suggest detailed measures to activate lives of the disabled, by examining education for the disabled until they get jobs, vocational rehabilitation processes, and their supported employment status and so on through recognizing rightly the importance of vocational rehabilitation, which is the most basic and at the same time the most needed one above all for independent lives of mental disabilities, and groping for possible measures to enable the disabled to be recovered enough to work in society.
First, the tightly knit network with Ministry of Education, Ministry of Labor, etc. should be established and managed for providing integrated services. Since vocational rehabilitation processes require tightly knit network with education, vocational rehabilitation, and labor policy, it is needed to establish vocational rehabilitation information network in order to enable cooperation systems with Ministry of Labor and Ministry of Education to be strengthened, for the purpose of establishing close network with Ministry of Education and Ministry of Labor. Also, it is needed to strengthen close cooperation systems by reinforcing functions of the Disabled Person's Welfare Act.
The Ministry of Health & Welfare, Ministry of Labor, and Ministry of Education, etc, perform its each role, but the institution that can generalize and perform all operations should be established. The government is mainly in charge of establishing the policies of employment promotion for the handicapped and basic plans, guiding for implementation of an employment obligation system, and performing education for the disabled. The government should make the vocational rehabilitation of the disabled have political willingness and make it try to strengthen the connection of industry-academy cooperation, and encourage community's programs to be formulated as social systems. In addition, the government should reinforce its promoting functions, such as recognition on society and recognition on the possibility of getting a job through mass media.
What is more, convenience facilities, which cannot be easily managed individually, should operate under the government's superintendence, and since the occupational classification according to requirements, characteristics, and development possibility of the handicapped is directly related to employment of the disabled, this classification should be considered and performed by the government. Also, the revision and complementation of related acts, along with the installation of employment environment such as a workshop for sheltered employment of serious disabilities, the establishment of training institution for rehabilitation engineering, and the production and dissemination of materials must be carried out by the government directly.
Finally, it is required to develop various types of careers that the disabled can have. When the types of careers, which are provided by vocational rehabilitation facilities for serious disabilities such as Korean sheltered workshop, until today, are analyzed, the types of occupations for mental disabilities have been extremely limited to and had a leaning toward, simple manufactures. These types of occupations require simple labor forces with extremely lowest value added, therefore, they have serious limitation regarding guarantee of income so much as not to be able to guarantee the basic livelihood of the handicapped.
As examined above, the vocational rehabilitation of all disabilities including mental disabilities cannot be only their own problem. It is a task that should be resolved by entire society.