TH

HE WAR is 3 years behind us. In that period much has been accomplished in the readjustment of the veteran to the society he left when duty called. Much more remains to be done, particularly for the war-disabled.

A year ago at this time there were some 125,000 disabled veterans on the active rolls of the EmployIment Service, looking for jobs that held the answer to an important share of the postwar employment problem. Now, a year later, after a concentrated attack on this problem of employment of the disabled veteran we find that almost 80,000 of them e still looking for that elusive job. But today's 0,000, yesterday's 125,000, and the quarter of a .nillion in 1946 are for the most part not the same people. As veterans were discharged from hospitals or completed rehabilitation training or schooling they became job seekers, replacing veterans who already had moved into a niche in the workaday world.

Selective Placement is a Teamwork Job

However, the fact that this figure has averaged between 90,000 and 105,000 for many months is sufficient reason why there should be no complacency, no let-up in our effort. Because someone made an effort to place them, many have found their niche in the workaday world. Placements just do not happen of themselves. Someone or some organization with the "knowhow" has to take the time and trouble to get the man and the job together, and open the employer's eyes to the fact that the joining of the two is for him a good investment. Doing these things has been the major job of the State Employment Services and the Veterans Employment Service during the past 3 years and will continue to be their major job in the coming year.

During the past 2 years there have been many

HIRE THE HANDICAPPED
IT'S GOOD BUSINESS

changes in the economic picture. We are in an era of almost full employment. We are facing unprecedented calls upon industry and business for goods and services needed at home and to meet commitments for European Relief.

In the Veterans Employment Service, too, we have had some changes of major import. Mr. Oscar Ewing, Administrator of the Federal Security Agency, replaces the late Secretary of Labor, L. B. Schwellenbach, on the Veterans Placement Service Board. Mr. Ewing, together with Carl R. Gray, Veterans Administrator, who is chairman of the Board, and Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, newly appointed Director of Selective Service, will help determine policies and programs which will enable the Veterans Employment Service to help the disabled veteran on the employment front.

In such an era of change, we must continue to have a singleness of purpose in meeting our problems. We must see that the veteran who was wounded or disabled in the service of his country receives an opportunity for gainful employment in a job commensurate with his experience and abilities. Doing this is a solemn trust and obligation. At the same time we need the wholehearted cooperation of those from whom we seek available positions for these men and women the employers of the country.

We have the advantage today of being able to tell employers that unemployed handicapped workers constitute a valuable "reservoir" from which to draw manpower for their needs. The depths of this reservoir have yet to be plumbed, but workers have been drawn from the surface and these were found to be highly satisfactory.

It is our hope that, in the coming observance of NEPH Week, October 3 to 9, we can substantially reduce the number of disabled veterans still waiting for employment. With the help of the Employment

Services and employers, with the aid and assistance of the press, radio, and magazines, and with the cooperative good will and energy of many large national organizations and their local memberships, we are confident that we shall do more than make a dent in these figures.

Statistics of themselves ordinarily seem lifeless; but properly evaluated in terms of the human equation, they can become compelling and dynamic. Thus, the 11,400 disabled veterans placed in jobs during October 1945 would be comparable in number to the crews of the Battleships Iowa, Wisconsin, and Missouri. Or, taking the 19,200 disabled veterans placed as a result of the October 1946 observance, and 17,802 following 1947's observance, we have the equivalent of a whole army fighting division placed in jobs.

Face the Future With Confidence

Reverting from mass placements to the individual, the efforts of the VES and the Employment Service have meant that, thanks to that job he got which allowed him to use his real talent for draftsmanship, an amputee from the Battle of the Bulge has now purchased his own home, paid his family doctor bills and is facing the future with confidence. It means that the sailor who suffered a stomach injury when the SS Franklin buckled and flamed under Jap attack is now set up in his own business, has bought a car and is employing two of his Navy buddies. It means that the flyer who bailed out over Bremen and lost a foot in a German prison camp is now home, driving his own car, handling a sales job and heading a local Luncheon Club. It means that the marine, blinded by a land mine on Iwo Jima, is happily at work on an assembly line and raising his small family in a new home. These, as well as thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of their wounded buddies, are now living

Previously a garage mechanic, this veteran with paralyzed right arm and leg, is a successful laboratory technician.

happy, normal lives because someone had confidence in their ability to handle particular jobs and positions. Nor has that confidence been misplaced.

Without suitable employment we have a situation bordering on chaos, with all the frustration and misery that it brings with it. Consequently, we have a solemn obligation, in conscience as well as in fact, to see that the God-given dignity of the individual disabled veteran shall be preserved in an economy that makes job opportunities available without regard to disability.

The Purple Heart parade must not be stopped by a Dead End Street. The hero of Anzio, Tarawa or the Coral Sea must not find the doors to freedom, which he kept open, slammed shut when he looks for a job. In sober self-interest the communities and the citizens of America must exert extra effort to see that homes, happiness and families are not placed out of the reach of the disabled veteran for lack of a suitable pay check for honest effort.

is no longer any question as to the competence of 66 THERE workers who are physically handicapped, because we have seen that when placed on jobs for which they are properly trained, they become satisfactory and valued employees."

"Because manufacturing industry employs only about one quarter of America's work force, the problem of providing more jobs for the handicapped is one that requires the concerted action of all employers, whether in commerce, industry or business. I think we may all be proud of the way industrial employers have opened the doors to many thousands of disabled veterans who are now at work in productive jobs. However, more remains to be done."-EARL BUNTING, President, National Association of Manufacturers.

I

T IS RECOGNIZED that job placement is the capstone of the structure of rehabilitation services. It must be equally recognized that this capstone will fall to the ground without a sound foundation and intervening fabric composed of many needed skills and services. It is upon this recognition of the inter-relationship of medical, social, vocational and economic processes that Canada's programme for the rehabilitation of disabled veterans has been built.

A description of job placement services would be quite unrealistic without some reference to the remainder of the structure. We do not consider job placement as an entity in itself, but rather as a part of a greater whole.

Medical and surgical treatment of the highest order is the undoubted foundation of the structure. The remaining fabric is a web of closely co-ordinated services. Among these services, medical rehabilitation with its ancillary therapies and the provision of prostheses, vocational guidance and social adjustment services, maintenance allowances, training in all its various forms, financial and technical assistance in land settlement, and medical, social and vocational after-care are important components. It is evident that the better the quality of the preparatory services,

the less difficult will each disabled veteran find it to attain his ultimate objective a suitable job. It would be uneconomical to apply selective placement techniques to a veteran with a speech defect and residual hemiplegia, if treatment could remove the one and minimize the other. It would be similarly uneconomical to train a hard-of-hearing veteran for a new job if a hearing aid, lip reading, auricular training and psycho-social adjustment services could make it possible for him to return to the old job which he prefers.

Almost all rehabilitation services are provided by or through the Department of Veterans Affairs, and those which it provides directly are supplemented by co-operating agencies such as the Department of Labour, schools and universities.

Rehabilitation has true meaning only in terms of the individual, and has value only insofar as each service is applied skillfully to meet the particular needs of each disabled veteran. As the war drew to its close, the Department's services grew in quality, diversity and extent. So, too, grew the need to coordinate the services so that each and every disabled veteran could make and carry out his own particular plan.

From the outset, the medical aspects of each patient's rehabilitation was co-ordinated by his doctor. Yet both patient and doctor require assistance in coordinating the equally important vocational aspects of the patient's rehabilitation, and in relating them in a practical way to his medical and social situation. It was for just this reason that, in 1945, the Casualty Rehabilitation Division was created within the Department. Its especial functions have been: vocational guidance, including provision of vocational exploration programmes in hospitals and other arrangements for training, job placement, and vocational aftercare.

The States Lend a Hand

From its very beginning, the Casualty Rehabilitation Division has received great assistance from the United States Employment Service and the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation, who made their own staff training courses available to its officers. These agencies made possible the training of its staff in rehabilitation case work, selective placement techniques, and related subjects.

In the course of its work, the Division naturally has had to interpret the problems of the disabled to many professions, agencies, and employers, and to indicate the manner in which each could contribute to their solution. Equally, considering vocational

Paralyzed from the waist down, this veteran changed from machine operation to inspection in a plant making sports equipment.

Despite amputation of right arm above the elbow, this veteran is an efficient machinist and welder.

guidance in the broadest sense of the term, the Division has had to assist the disabled to weld the multitude of available public and private services into unified individual plans.

The key personnel of this Division are known as Casualty Rehabilitation Officers, or CRO's. Each is a case worker, responsible for each of his cases from the time it is assigned to him until ultimate rehabilitation, or until transferred to another CRO. The services of the Division start in the hospital, but continue until the disabled veteran has become established in a happy and suitable vocational and social life.

Some CRO's work mainly in hospitals, being a part of the teams on the various treatment services, such as neuro-surgery, general medicine, and so on. Others work mainly outside the hospital. Cases are assigned to these latter on a geographical basis. One or more CRO's are responsible for particular areas, such as counties, or other administrative or economic units, and disabled veterans returning to these areas are assigned to the responsible CRO. These CRO's become thoroughly familiar with their own areas, and the knowledge which they build of employers and employment opportunities gives their vocational guidance a practical flavor to be gained in no other way. The CRO in a hospital must collaborate with the CRO who will take over the case on discharge. Against this background the main outlines of our jobplacements programme may now be sketched in.

It will have been seen that job placement is one of the responsibilities of the Casualty Rehabilitation Division. This certainly does not mean that it is the only channel through which the disabled veteran can get a job. As a case worker, the CRO is judged in part by the number of unemployed among his case load, and not according to the number of placements which he himself has made. As a result, each is more than willing to make use of all existing placement

resources.

Two themes run through all the Division's thinking on placement. First, wherever possible, disabled veterans are encouraged to find their own jobs. It requires more skill and effort to assist a disabled veteran to select and prepare for a suitable occupation, and plan an effective job-finding campaign than to arrange a direct placement. The long-range results, in terms of independence, more than repay the effort. Second, full use of every possible placement resource is made and encouraged.

The Department of Labour's National Employment Service maintains a Special Placements Division, which applies selective placement techniques in referring the disabled to jobs. A great deal of use is made of the services of this Division, and results have been very satisfactory. Physical capacity and other information about disabled veterans and about job opportunities is freely exchanged.

Harmony of Relationship

Certain administrative procedures, as well as good personal relationships between their respective staffs undoubtedly contribute to the co-operation between these Divisions. The Casualty Rehabilitation Division does not record placements; thus there is no suggestion of competition with the National Employment Service. Neither does the Casualty Rehabilitation Division seek out job orders. Job orders are placed with the National Employment Service. Naturally, employment opportunities come to CRO's, from time to time, and they fill them if they can. If they cannot, they pass the opportunity along to the National Employment Service for its own use either with veterans or civilians.

There are, of course, placement resources other than the National Employment Service. That a disabled veteran has a brother-in-law who owns a shoe repair business, or a father who is a foreman in a local industry, may be important factors in guidance and placement. Service Clubs, Legion Branches, the War Amputations of Canada, the Canadian Paraplegic Association, the National Society for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, and influential citizens can all contribute placement leads.

Although many disabled veterans find their own jobs, or can get them through the Special Placements Division of the Employment Service, there is always a proportion in which the direct placement participation of the CRO is essential. The veteran's disability in relation to his personality, qualifications and the

September 1948

This veteran, despite amputation of both legs and injury to one arm, changed from prewar Occupation as a logger to a successful career as a commercial fisherman.

opportunities in the area in which he is determined to settle, may make this necessary.

In such a situation, Rehabilitation Officers have found only one solution-"leg work." The CRO cannot wait for job orders to come to him. He must go out and find, or even make a suitable job opportunity. There are two sayings among CRO's which are almost slogans-"If the right job isn't available, then find it," and "You may get him the job, but help him think he got it himself."

The selective placement technique has been invaluable to both the Casualty Rehabilitation Division and the National Employment Service. It is applied somewhat differently by each. The National Employment Service uses it within the framework of regular employment service practice. The Casualty Rehabilitation Division uses it more as a method of thinking, and encourages employers to do the same. Only in the rare case of very large companies does

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