Counseling Individuals With Disabilities Kosciulek,

Counseling Individuals With Disabilities Kosciulek, John F. (Autumn 2004). "Empowering people with disabilities through vocational rehabilitation counseling." American Rehabilitation. Autumn 2004. FindArticles.com. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0842/is_1_28/ai_n8681410 According to John F. Kosciulek's article "Empowering people with disabilities through vocational rehabilitation counseling," providing individuals with disabilities adequate vocational counseling and rehabilitation "can be instrumental" not only in enhancing their career success and ability to be economically self-sufficient but can also improve the psychological quality of life of individuals with disabilities (Kosciulek 2004, p.1).

A career counselor can provide focus and direction for anyone, of course. But career counselors may have an especially useful role to play in the lives of people with a disability because of psychological and social obstacles faced by persons in this demographic.

While having a career is an important source of empowerment and esteem for all individuals, regardless of able-bodiedness or able-mindedness, "frequently, people with disabilities arrive at adulthood with few career options...Limited early vocational and social experiences encountered by people with disabilities restrict the array of career options they perceive, impede decision-making ability and impair future vocational development" (Kosciulek 2004, p.1).

In some instances, this may be partly the function of the disability itself, but in other instances, overly protective family members may hamper the individual or negative and unjustified social prejudices about the disabled person's competence at school and at work many limit abilities to learn and grow. Vocational counseling provides individuals with a better ability to make their own decisions. The purpose of vocational counseling is to ask questions and to provide tools for self-empowerment in the real world, not to give directives.

Many individuals with disabilities have had little opportunity for successful experience in decision making and, therefore, lack competence in making decisions (Kosciulek 2004, p.1). A vocational counselor can provide a different view of the disabled person than that person may receive either from friends and family or rehabilitation counselors -- in the relationship, the vocational counselor is the facilitator of the disabled person's ambitions, a guide rather than a paternalistic figure. This type of relationship can better prepare the counseled individual for the workplace.

While simply the process of vocational counseling can give the disabled person a sense of empowerment, because it affirms the counselee's capacity as a 'worker' not just as a 'disabled person,' the ideal relationship between counselor and advisee is that of a working relationship. Seeing the client as an adult and as a partner, regardless of the extent of the client's disability, is the ideal mindset for the counselor. Vocational counseling also provides the.