Career Development and Employment of People With Disabilities

This chapter provides an introduction to the constructs, theories, and strategies that are relevant for practicing rehabilitation counselors (RCs) to assist individuals with disabilities to attain work, maximize productivity, and successfully adjust to the contemporary social, organizational, and personal dynamics in the work environment. It covers the topics that highlights the vocational focus of rehabilitation counseling: centrality of work in people’s lives, how work relates to individuals’ basic needs and how these needs can be used to develop multidimensional outcomes to measure the effectiveness of rehabilitation counseling, the Illinois Work and Well-Being Model, relevant theories of career development and work adjustment, and basic career and employment development interventions. In addition to the core value that work is central to people’s lives, the chapter is based on several assumptions that the authors believe are not only relevant, but also fundamental to the field and practice of rehabilitation counseling.