Recommendation concerning Vocational Rehabilitation of the
Disabled
Recommendation:R099
Place: Geneva
Session of the Conference:38
Date of adoption=22:06:1955
The General Conference of the International Labour
Organisation,
Having been convened at Geneva by the Governing Body of the
International Labour Office, and having met in its Thirty-eighth Session on 1
June 1955, and
Having decided upon the adoption of certain proposals with
regard to the vocational rehabilitation of the disabled, which is the fourth
item on the agenda of the session, and
Having determined that these proposals shall take the form
of a Recommendation,
adopts this twenty-second day of June of the year one
thousand nine hundred and fifty-five, the following Recommendation, which may be
cited as the Vocational Rehabilitation (Disabled) Recommendation, 1955:
Whereas there are many and varied problems concerning those
who suffer disability, and
Whereas rehabilitation of such persons is essential in order
that they be restored to the fullest possible physical, mental, social,
vocational and economic usefulness of which they are capable, and
Whereas to meet the employment needs of the individual
disabled person and to use manpower resources to the best advantage it is
necessary to develop and restore the working ability of disabled persons by
combining into one continuous and co-ordinated process medical, psychological,
social, educational, vocational guidance, vocational training and placement
services, including follow-up,
the term vocational rehabilitation means that part of
the continuous and co-ordinated process of rehabilitation which involves
the provision of those vocational services, e. g. vocational guidance,
vocational training and selective placement, designed to enable a
disabled person to secure and retain suitable employment; and
the term disabled person means an individual whose
prospects of securing and retaining suitable employment are
substantially reduced as a result of physical or mental impairment.
Vocational rehabilitation services should be made
available to all disabled persons, whatever the origin and nature of their
disability and whatever their age, provided they can be prepared for, and
have reasonable prospects of securing and retaining, suitable employment.
All necessary and practicable measures should be taken to
establish or develop specialised vocational guidance services for disabled
persons requiring aid in choosing or changing their occupations.
The process of vocational guidance should include, as far
as practicable in the national circumstances and as appropriate in
individual cases:
interview with a vocational guidance officer;
examination of record of work experience;
examination of scholastic or other records relating
to education or training received;
medical examination for vocational guidance purposes;
appropriate tests of capacity and aptitude, and,
where desirable, other psychological tests;
ascertainment of personal and family circumstances;
ascertainment of aptitudes and the development of
abilities by appropriate work experiences and trial, and by other
similar means;
technical trade tests, either verbal or otherwise, in
all cases where such seem necessary;
analysis of physical capacity in relation to
occupational requirements and the possibility of improving that
capacity;
provision of information concerning employment and
training opportunities relating to the qualifications, physical
capacities, aptitudes, preferences and experience of the person
concerned and to the needs of the employment market.
The principles, measures and methods of vocational
training generally applied in the training of non-disabled persons should
apply to disabled persons in so far as medical and educational conditions
permit.
The training of disabled persons should, wherever
possible, enable them to carry on an economic activity in which they can
use their vocational qualifications or aptitudes in the light of
employment prospects.
For this purpose, such training should be:
co-ordinated with selective placement, after
medical advice, in occupations in which the performance of the work
involved is affected by, or affects, the disability to the least
possible degree;
provided, wherever possible and appropriate, in
the occupation in which the disabled person was previously employed
or in a related occupation; and
continued until the disabled person has acquired
the skill necessary for working normally on an equal basis with
non-disabled workers if he is capable of doing so.
Wherever possible, disabled persons should receive
training with and under the same conditions as non-disabled persons.
Special services should be set up or developed for
training disabled persons who, particularly by reason of the nature or
the severity of their disability, cannot be trained in company with
non-disabled persons.
Wherever possible and appropriate, these services
should include, inter alia:
schools and training centres, residential or
otherwise;
special short-term and long-term training courses
for specific occupations;
courses to increase the skills of disabled
persons.
Measures should be taken to encourage employers to
provide training for disabled persons; such measures should include, as
appropriate, financial, technical, medical or vocational assistance.
Measures should be taken to develop special
arrangements for the placement of disabled persons.
These arrangements should ensure effective placement
by means of:
registration of applicants for employment;
recording their occupational qualifications,
experience and desires;
interviewing them for employment;
evaluating, if necessary, their physical and
vocational capacity;
encouraging employers to notify job vacancies to
the competent authority;
contacting employers, when necessary, to
demonstrate the employment capacities of disabled persons, and to
secure employment for them;
assisting them to obtain such vocational
guidance, vocational training, medical and social services as may be
necessary.
Follow-up measures should be taken:
to ascertain whether placement in a job or recourse
to vocational training or retraining services has proved to be
satisfactory and to evaluate employment counselling policy and methods;
to remove as far as possible obstacles which would
prevent a disabled person from being satisfactorily settled in work.
Vocational rehabilitation services should be organised
and developed as a continuous and co-ordinated programme by the competent
authority or authorities and, in so far as practicable, use should be made
of existing vocational guidance, vocational training and placement services.
The competent authority or authorities should ensure that
an adequate and suitably qualified staff is available to deal with the
vocational rehabilitation, including follow-up, of disabled persons.
The development of vocational rehabilitation services
should at least keep pace with the development of the general services for
vocational guidance, vocational training and placement.
Vocational rehabilitation services should be organised
and developed so as to include opportunities for disabled persons to prepare
for, secure and retain, suitable employment on their own account in all
fields of work.
Administrative responsibility for the general
organisation and development of vocational rehabilitation services should be
entrusted:
to one authority, or
jointly to the authorities responsible for the
different activities in the programme with one of these authorities
entrusted with primary responsibility for co-ordination.
The competent authority or authorities should take
all necessary and desirable measures to achieve co-operation and
co-ordination between the public and private bodies engaged in
vocational rehabilitation activities.
Such measures should include as appropriate:
determination of the responsibilities and
obligations of public and private bodies;
financial assistance to private bodies
effectively participating in vocational rehabilitation activities;
and
technical advice to private bodies.
Vocational rehabilitation services should be
established and developed with the assistance of representative advisory
committees, set up at the national level and, where appropriate, at
regional and local levels.
These committees should, as appropriate, include
members drawn from among:
the authorities and bodies directly concerned
with vocational rehabilitation;
employers' and workers' organisations;
persons specially qualified to serve by reason of
their knowledge of, and concern with, the vocational rehabilitation
of the disabled; and
organisations of disabled persons.
These committees should be responsible for advising:
at the national level, on the development of
policy and programmes for vocational rehabilitation;
at regional and local levels, on the application
of measures taken nationally, their adaptation to regional and local
conditions and the co-ordination of regional and local activities.
Research should be fostered and encouraged,
particularly by the competent authority, to evaluate and improve
vocational rehabilitation services for the disabled.
Such research should include continuous or special
studies on the placement of the disabled.
Research should also include scientific work on the
different techniques and methods which play a part in vocational
rehabilitation.
Measures should be taken to enable disabled persons to
make full use of all available vocational rehabilitation services and to
ensure that some authority is made responsible for assisting personally each
disabled person to achieve maximum vocational rehabilitation.
Such measures should include:
information and publicity on the availability of
vocational rehabilitation services and on the prospects which they offer
to the disabled;
the provision of appropriate and adequate financial
assistance to disabled persons.
Such financial assistance should be provided at any
stage in the vocational rehabilitation process and should be designed to
facilitate the preparation for, and the effective retention of, suitable
employment including work on own account.
It should include the provision of free vocational
rehabilitation services, maintenance allowances, any necessary
transportation expenses incurred during any periods of vocational
preparation for employment, and loans or grants of money or the supply
of the necessary tools and equipment, and of prosthetic and any other
necessary appliances.
Disabled persons should be enabled to make use of all
vocational rehabilitation services without losing any social security
benefits which are unrelated to their participation in these services.
Disabled persons living in areas having limited prospects
of future employment or limited facilities for preparation for employment
should be provided with opportunities for vocational preparation, including
provision of board and lodging, and with opportunities for transfer, should
they so desire, to areas with greater employment prospects.
Disabled persons (including those in receipt of
disability pensions) should not as a result of their disability be
discriminated against in respect of wages and other conditions of employment
if their work is equal to that of non-disabled persons.
There should be the closest co-operation between, and
the maximum co-ordination of, the activities of the bodies responsible
for medical treatment and those responsible for the vocational
rehabilitation of disabled persons.
This co-operation and co-ordination of activities
should exist:
to ensure that medical treatment and, where
necessary, the provision of appropriate prosthetic apparatus, are
directed to facilitating and developing the subsequent employability
of the disabled persons concerned;
to promote the identification of disabled persons
in need of, and suitable for, vocational rehabilitation;
to enable vocational rehabilitation to be
commenced at the earliest and most suitable stage;
to provide medical advice, where necessary, at
all stages of vocational rehabilitation;
to provide assessment of working capacity.
Wherever possible, and subject to medical advice,
vocational rehabilitation should start during medical treatment.
Measures should be taken, in close co-operation with
employers' and workers' organisations, to promote maximum opportunities for
disabled persons to secure and retain suitable employment.
Such measures should be based on the following
principles:
disabled persons should be afforded an equal
opportunity with the non-disabled to perform work for which they are
qualified;
disabled persons should have full opportunity to
accept suitable work with employers of their own choice;
emphasis should be placed on the abilities and work
capacities of disabled persons and not on their disabilities.
Such measures should include:
research designed to analyse and demonstrate the
working capacity of disabled persons;
widespread and sustained publicity of a factual kind
with special reference to:
the work performance, output, accident rate,
absenteeism and stability in employment of disabled persons in
comparison with non-disabled persons employed in the same work;
personnel selection methods based on specific
requirements;
methods of improving work conditions, including
adjustment and modification of machinery and equipment, to
facilitate the employment of disabled workers;
the means whereby increased liability of individual
employers in respect of workmen's compensation premiums may be
eliminated;
the encouraging of employers to transfer workers
whose working capacity has undergone a change as a result of a physical
impairment to suitable jobs within their undertakings.
Wherever appropriate in the national circumstances, and
consistent with national policy, the employment of disabled persons should
be promoted by means such as:
the engagement by employers of a percentage of
disabled persons under such arrangements as will avoid the displacement
of non-disabled workers;
reserving certain designated occupations for disabled
persons;
arranging that seriously disabled persons are given
opportunities for employment or preference in certain occupations
considered suitable for them;
encouraging the creation and facilitating the
operation of co-operatives or other similar enterprises managed by, or
on behalf of, disabled persons.
Measures should be taken by the competent authority
or authorities, in co-operation, as appropriate, with private
organisations, to organise and develop arrangements for training and
employment under sheltered conditions for those disabled persons who
cannot be made fit for ordinary competitive employment.
Such arrangements should include the establishment of
sheltered workshops and special measures for those disabled persons who,
for physical, psychological or geographical reasons, cannot travel
regularly to and from work.
Sheltered workshops should provide, under effective
medical and vocational supervision, not only useful and remunerative work
but opportunities for vocational adjustment and advancement with, whenever
possible, transfer to open employment.
Special programmes for the homebound should be so
organised and developed as to provide, under effective medical and
vocational supervision, useful and remunerative work in their own homes.
Where and to the extent to which statutory regulation of
wages and conditions of employment applying to workers generally is in
operation it should apply to disabled persons employed under sheltered
conditions.
Vocational rehabilitation services for disabled children
and young persons of school age should be organised and developed in close
co-operation between the authorities responsible for education and the
authority or authorities responsible for vocational rehabilitation.
Educational programmes should take into account the
special problems of disabled children and young persons and their need of
opportunities, equal to those of non-disabled children and young persons, to
receive education and vocational preparation best suited to their age,
abilities, aptitudes and interests.
The fundamental purposes of vocational rehabilitation
services for disabled children and young persons should be to reduce as much
as possible the occupational and psychological handicaps imposed by their
disabilities and to offer them full opportunities of preparing for, and
entering, the most suitable occupations. The utilisation of these
opportunities should involve co-operation between medical, social and
educational services and the parents or guardians of the disabled children
and young persons.
The education, vocational guidance, training and
placement of disabled children and young persons should be developed
within the general framework of such services to non-disabled children
and young persons, and should be conducted, wherever possible and
desirable, under the same conditions as, and in company with,
non-disabled children and young persons.
Special provision should be made for those disabled
children and young persons whose disabilities prevent their
participation in such services under the same conditions as, and in
company with, non-disabled children and young persons.
This provision should include, in particular,
specialised training of teachers.
Measures should be taken to ensure that children and
young persons found by medical examination to have disabilities or
limitations or to be generally unfit for employment:
receive, as early as possible, proper medical
treatment for removing or alleviating their disabilities or limitations;
are encouraged to attend school or are guided towards
suitable occupations likely to be agreeable to them and within their
capacity and are provided with opportunities of training for such
occupations;
have the advantage of financial aid, if necessary,
during the period of medical treatment, education and vocational
training.
Vocational rehabilitation services should be adapted
to the particular needs and circumstances of each country and should be
developed progressively in the light of these needs and circumstances
and in accordance with the principles laid down in this Recommendation.
The main objectives of this progressive development
should be:
to demonstrate and develop the working qualities
of disabled persons;
to promote, in the fullest measure possible,
suitable employment opportunities for them;
to overcome, in respect of training or
employment, discrimination against disabled persons on account of
their disability.
The progressive development of vocational rehabilitation
services should be promoted with the help, where desired, of the
International Labour Office:
by the provision, wherever possible, of technical
advisory assistance;
by organising a comprehensive international exchange
of experience acquired in different countries; and
by other forms of international co-operation directed
towards the organisation and development of services adapted to the
needs and conditions of individual countries and including the training
of the staff required.
