What is The Primary Goal Of Vocational Rehabilitation?

Some conditions and injuries can have a drastic impact on your life, especially if they result in any form of permanent disability. Sadly, even a small limitation (such as the inability to bend over) can make it hard to find employment and receive a substantial income. 

The best way to rebuild your life after such an event is to recover immediate damages like medical costs through filing a personal injury claim against the liable party. It’s worth noting that medical costs are only a small portion of your full damages, and you may also be available to recover compensation for loss of income. 

To prove that you are unable to find employment as a result of your injury and are entitled to compensation for loss of income, your attorney can hire a vocational rehabilitation specialist to bolster your case. 

Here’s what is the primary goal of vocational rehabilitation and how it can help you recover the full amount of the damages. 

What Do Vocational Rehabilitation Experts Do?

The primary goal of vocational rehabilitation is to assist individuals with functional, physical, or cognitive limitations to find and maintain employment. As such, a vocational rehabilitation expert can help these individuals overcome these limitations and ultimately improve their quality of life. 

So if this is the primary goal of vocational rehabilitation, how can it impact your personal injury case?

Simple - conducting vocational rehabilitation requires expertise in vocational matters like the intricacies of roles present in the labor market. Because of this, vocational experts are qualified to evaluate the vocational outlook of an individual in a personal injury case and even provide testimony in court on behalf of the plaintiff.

This testimony can address various matters regarding the plaintiff’s vocational limitations and determine how the injury has affected their earning capacity. Thus, they can provide a full picture of the damages. 

Qualifications Required for Vocational Experts

Becoming a vocational rehabilitation specialist requires a lot of training. For starters, the expert must be certified as a rehabilitation counselor, possess an MA in the field of Rehabilitation Counseling (or related fields), and have at least five years of experience. 

For an individual to testify in court in the form of an opinion, they must be qualified by experience, training, skill, or education. This means that the following conditions must be met for the vocational rehabilitation testimony to be admissible in court:

• Provided testimony is based on reliable data and facts
• Testimony was based on standardized methods
• All the methods used by the expert were reliably applied to the case
• Expert’s knowledge can assist the trier of the fact to understand the evidence or establish a fact in an issue

Since a vocational expert has the expertise on the current employment market and requirements for available jobs, they are competent to make informed opinions on the plaintiff’s injuries and their effect on employability. Plus they meet the federal requirement for expert witnesses in the context of legal proceedings, which means the testimony provided will be admissible. 

How Can a Vocational Rehabilitation Expert Help with a Personal Injury Case?

The assessment in vocational rehabilitation outlines both economic and non-economic facts of the case:

• Medical costs (treatment, medical equipment, medications, therapy, etc)
• Physical and mental capacity of the plaintiff
• Personal data
• Work and education history
• Aptitude and skill testing
• Earning capacity pre- and post-injury

Medical records can corroborate all this data and the expert can provide a projection of the life expectancy of the plaintiff, the expected length of their vocational troubles, and the effects of the limitations on their future financial losses. This helps accurately demonstrate the extent of damages and makes it certain that the compensation that the plaintiff is asking for is siezable enough to account for all losses. 

The benefit of involving a vocational rehabilitation expert is that it exponentially strengthens the case and sees to it that damages awarded can be enough to make the plaintiff whole again - which is the entire point of a personal injury case. 

With substantial injuries, the impact of the physical and mental limitations make it harder or even impossible for the plaintiff to find and hold down a job. It may take months, years, or in some cases, even for the rest of the plaintiff’s life. 

This is exactly why the primary goal of vocational rehabilitation has many similarities to the impact of vocational expertise on the case. The expert can provide a data-based estimate of the full impact of the injuries on the economic situation and well-being of the plaintiff. This may include the plaintiff’s loss of earning capacity, medical needs, the types of jobs that they can perform with their limitations, and the effects of the injury on their ability to perform work-related tasks. 

More importantly, the evaluation will account for the past work history of the plaintiff and any transferable skills that may impact their potential employment opportunities. 

Start Strengthening Your Case Today

Making use of the services of a vocational rehabilitation specialist is the only way to provide the court with an accurate picture of your full injury. This significantly simplifies the process of accurately accounting for the full amount of damages you suffered in the accident. 

Furthermore, the vocational knowledge of these experts on matters such as employment trends and the job market helps establish a connection between economic damages caused by the loss of earning capacity and the damages incurred by medical treatment. 

If you don’t know where to find a vocational expert, choose an established company with an impeccable track record. Here at OAS, Inc., we have worked tirelessly for four decades to build a spotless reputation and a track record of success. 

Regardless of your needs or geographic location, experts at OAS help plaintiffs in all parts of the US as we have the knowledge and the resources to aid you and your attorney in building a winning case.

Call us at 1-800-292-1919 or reach us through our online form and we’ll evaluate your case free of charge. 

Note: 

The information in this blog post is for reference only and not legal advice. As such, you should not make legal decisions based on the information in this blog post. Moreover, there is no lawyer-client relationship resulting from this blog post, nor should any such relationship be implied. If you need legal counsel, please consult a lawyer licensed to practice in your jurisdiction.