Wounded Warrior Careers – Executive Summary from Soon to be Released Report from the National Organization on Disability

Since late 2008, the National Organization on Disability has been working with severely injured veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan as they plan, prepare for, and complete the transition from military to civilian careers. Beginning with nearly two years of research and consultation with injured veterans and their families, NOD designed and built a new program for this purpose, called Wounded Warrior Careers. NOD will be releasing its report on the program this Veterans Day.  We're pleased to share with you the Executive Summary from the report.

The Wounded Warrior Careers program was created at the invitation of the U.S. Army and continues to work in close partnership with the Army Wounded Warriors program, known as AW2. In its first four years, Wounded Warrior Careers has served 275 seriously injured veterans, of whom 70 percent are now in jobs, education, or training. Among Wounded Warriors not enrolled in WWC, the comparable figure is just 34 percent.

The program began as a demonstration, intended to test various ways of meeting the needs of injured veterans who are ready, willing, and able to re-build their careers after retiring from the military with a disability. It has continued to expand and document the methods that work best. Beginning with three locations chosen for their high concentration of Wounded Warriors - North Carolina, Colorado, and metropolitan Dallas, Texas - the program is now prepared to expand to two more locations, with a third un-der active consideration.

WWC begins with a referral from an AW2 Advocate, the Army's principal liaison with Wounded Warriors. The Advocate typically enjoys a strong confidential relationship with injured service members and a good working knowledge of their readiness and determination to begin thinking about a civilian career. This "warm referral" brings the veteran to WWC with an expectation of trust and partnership that are essential to a relationship that may need to last for several years, through multiple stages of planning, preparation, and course-correction.

A trusting relationship is particularly important considering the kinds of injury that are most common among veterans in WWC. These prominently include Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI) and Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI)¹, often accompanied by major clinical depression. Until they are properly treated and managed, the effects of these conditions can seriously complicate the process of building clarity, confidence, and determination about a career path. Consequently, the relationship between the Wounded Warrior and the Career Specialist, WWC's frontline professional, incorporates six essential qualities: It is personal, proactive, prolonged, holistic, results-focused, and collaborative.

This means that Career Specialists deal with each veteran's opportunities and challenges as an individual, unique case. They take the initiative to keep the discussion going, often meeting with veterans in their homes and communities and making certain that momentum is maintained through-out the process. The relationship extends not just to employment, but well beyond the first job, to ensure that momentary setbacks or frustrations don't derail progress. Career Specialists work not with veterans alone, but with their families and, later, with their employers to ensure that career goals are integrated with other aspects of family life, health, and well-being. Everything the veteran and Career Specialist do together is organized around a succession of milestones, designed to produce concrete accomplishments at every step of the transition. Along the way, WWC tracks data on these accomplishments and aggregates the data to learn what methods are most successful and what needs or problems deserve more attention. Finally, the program is not intended to provide all services; Career Specialists seek out partnerships with expert organizations including education, training, workforce, and health providers to make certain that various activities are part of a coherent whole, consistently leading to the goal of satisfying, long-term careers.

The first stage of the Wounded Warrior Careers experience is Career Planning, when veterans and Career Specialists chart a realistic but effective path from military to civilian life. They explore the veteran's interests and ambitions, formulate goals, identify obstacles, and sort through the steps and available resources that could help overcome the obstacles and reach the goals. This stage ends with the development of a Career Action Plan, a long-range roadmap, covering five or more years, developed jointly by the veteran and the Career Specialist.

Next comes Career Preparation, when the Career Action Plan begins to be turned into action. Depending on what the plan calls for, the veteran might enroll in education or training, pursue referrals to other services and supports, and, when appropriate, take a step into transitional or supported employment. Career Specialists work hand-in-hand with them at every step in this process, sometimes accompanying them to explore options or working with them on applications for benefits. In the third stage, Job-Seeking Support, Career Specialists guide veterans through the actual work of translating interests, abilities, and skills into a job and a career, including helping them develop a résumé, introducing them to prospective employers or job-search programs, helping them plan and negotiate accommodations they may need on the job, and seeking out job opportunities that might match their goals.

In Post-Placement Support, the final stage, Career Specialists offer an ex-tended period of guidance and support with problem-solving after the vet-eran takes a job. They may tackle issues such as housing, ongoing job coaching, interacting with employers, on-the-job performance, and general advocacy on the veteran's behalf. Here, the Career Specialist gains another client: the employer. Employers may need help in recruiting and assimilating veterans with disabilities into the workforce, making necessary accommodations, or simply understanding the veteran's transition and dispelling misplaced worries or preconceptions.

As the field of workforce development becomes more familiar with the needs of injured service members, more and more organizations are beginning to offer programs tailored to their needs. NOD has therefore commit-ted itself to encouraging and enriching this development, with efforts to expand avenues of communication, consultation, and networking among the various programs and organizations that seek to serve veterans. That includes a vigorous effort to track our own progress, measure outcomes, document what we learn, and share that information as broadly as possible.

The transition from the all-encompassing regimen of military life to the free-form competition of the civilian labor market is difficult for veterans under the best of circumstances. But for Wounded Warriors, suddenly and violently separated from a career to which, in many cases, they had planned to dedicate their lives, and thrust into a civilian job market where their skills may be poorly understood and undervalued, the transition can be far more forbidding. Add in the effects of PTSI and TBI - conditions that complicate planning, learning, and confidence, the most basic requisites of starting a new career - and the need for support grows much deeper. The standard model of self-directed workforce programs is much less likely to work for injured veterans. Something fundamentally different is required. That is the reason for Wounded Warrior Careers.

The successful transition of injured veterans into satisfying civilian employment provides an invaluable opportunity for the United States to continue benefiting from the dedication, talent, and leadership of its bravest young people. But more fundamentally, making sure that this transition is successful is the ultimate debt we owe to those most severely injured in their country's service. The question that WWC seeks to answer is therefore not whether such an effort is called for, but how creative, smart, and effective that effort can be.

THE NATIONAL ORGANIZATION ON DISABILITY was founded in 1982 with the

mission of expanding the participation and contribution of America's 54 mil- lion men, women, and children with disabilities in all aspects of life. In re- cent years, NOD has concentrated on the mission of increasing employment opportunities for the 79 percent of working-age Americans with disabilities who are not employed.

With programs on the ground, NOD is demonstrating new employment practices and models of service delivery, evaluating results, and sharing successful approaches for widespread replication. We are conducting research on disability employment issues, including the field's most widely used polls on employment trends and the quality of life for people with disabilities.

And our subject matter experts in disability and employment provide consulting services to public agencies and employers seeking to harness the unique talents that people with disabilities can bring to the workforce.

For more on the National Organization on Disability, visit www.nod.org.