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When our veterans finish their service and begin their transition into civilian life, they can face numerous challenges, both personal and professional. Veteran Readiness and Employment (VR&E) (formerly known as the Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment Program) service providers aim to provide resources and support to veterans as they pursue education, embark on new careers, and start businesses.
Like any organization working for the betterment of a particular community, support for veterans should be provided on the individual level. The ability to personalize services and support to the individual will have a greater impact than one-size-fits-all policies that might benefit some, but ultimately leave unique needs and circumstances unaddressed.
Below, we’ll explore how hands-on, case-by-case management of veteran populations can help caseworkers and organizations better serve those who have served us.
How Do Veterans Benefit From VR&E Services?
Veterans’ experiences while on active duty don’t always translate to civilian life — but they can. Every branch of the military has service members who serve in mechanical, administrative, medical, technological, and leadership roles, giving some veterans transferable skills for their career after service.
However, many American veterans struggle to transfer those skills, either because of a lack of related roles in the civilian job market, or because they simply don’t know how to navigate the complex process of the modern job search after decades in the service.
Furthermore, many veterans come home with service-connected disabilities that they may feel limit their options for employment. Disabled veterans may struggle with the job search itself due to their disabilities, or feel uncomfortable requesting accommodations for their disabilities on the job.
What Resources Are Available for Veterans and Employment Service Providers?
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has implemented a number of programs to support veterans and their dependents through training, job placement services, and financial assistance. All service members are eligible for these programs, regardless of their service-connected disability rating.
Because of the growing number of organizations and programs aiming to connect service members with suitable employment, some veterans may feel overwhelmed and unsure of where to turn. Working with a vocational rehabilitation counselor can help these veterans navigate these networks and get the most out of all VR&E programs available to them. And vocational rehabilitation counselors can level up their services by integrating hands-on case management.
How Case Management Can Help Veterans Land the Right Roles
Vocational counseling benefits all kinds of people, including military service members, veterans, and lifelong civilians. Any individual making major life changes might require assistance in adapting their professional life to changes in their personal life (and vice versa). Vocational rehab is an incredible way to help individuals overcome obstacles in a sustainable way — empowering them with improved resources, knowledge, and job training.
Case management tools are critical in helping individuals — each with unique experience, skills, challenges, and even disabilities — pursue their unique goals. CaseWorthy’s customizable dashboards and tiers of access help vast teams coordinate with one another and their clients, so every case gets the individual attention they need.
Having the right case management tool for your organization can simplify communication and allocation of vocational rehabilitation services, VA benefits, disability compensation, education benefits, subsistence allowances, and more. When considering how to organize your team and services, keep these case management features and tenets in mind:
Address the individual
Data is powerful, but case notes are integral to treating people like people, rather than a statistic. Everyone’s unique history makes up who they are and helps establish a starting point and waypoints along the path toward their employment goals. With robust case notes, all members of a team can stay in the know about a client’s challenges, goals, and progress while they are being served. Knowing them personally, beyond a basic profile, helps clients feel understood, cared for, and supported.
Everything is connected
Many factors can contribute to employment instability. If a veteran is struggling to secure health care for a disability or they don’t have stable housing, they will undoubtedly struggle with their job search and employment as a result. Case notes and tagging within a case management system can help service providers make connections between challenges and solutions. Talk to your clients about their overall well-being, and drill down into the challenges they are facing personally, mentally, emotionally, physically, financially, and more, to get a better idea of which solutions should be prioritized. You may even be able to solve two issues with one resource and accelerate their journey toward success.
Consensus is strength
Most veterans’ vocational rehab programs employ teams of specialists to help their clients, and those specialists need to be able to communicate effectively. CaseWorthy’s customizable dashboards can ensure entire teams are looking at — and drawing conclusions from — the same data, to prevent misinterpretation and misunderstanding. Veterans understand better than most the value of an entire team being on the same page. Consensus among service providers breeds swift action and confidence in both the providers and the clients they serve.
Referrals let specialists specialize
No individual case worker can do everything for a client in need, and this is especially true of the often complex, overlapping challenges of our service members and veterans. Establishing and maintaining a rich referral network ensures veterans can access experts in every field, from benefit eligibility and service officers, to medical providers, to independent living service officers, to training program coordinators. Referral networks can also help vets connect with employers, apprenticeships, and internships. CaseWorthy makes it easy for stakeholders of every kind to rally around our veterans. Plus, our built-in eligibility engine can help case workers quickly identify what services an individual is able to receive.
CaseWorthy Makes It Easy To Serve Those Who Serve
CaseWorthy’s case management system built for veterans’ services organizations makes it easy to manage enormous networks of data, people, and programs and establish connections between them. Our powerful human services software provides a beautiful, intuitive interface for collecting, organizing, and reviewing data, so your team can spend less time on paperwork and more time with the people they serve. If you’re looking for a specific solution — for case management, resource management, scheduling and referrals, secure and compliant communication, or all of the above — let us know.
We’ve worked hard to develop a system that works hard for you, no matter your process or goals, and we’d love to show you what we can do.
