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78 Int'l Lab. Rev. 461 (1958)
Rehabilitation in Australia

handle is hein.journals/intlr78 and id is 495 raw text is: Rehabilitation in Australia by F. H. ROWE1 Until relatively recently the rehabilitation o/the civilian disabled was carried out in most countries by private voluntary organisations. But governments have progressively come to realise the social and economic importance of developing and restoring the working ability of disabled persons and, for this purpose-to quote the Vocational Rehabilitation (Disabled) Recommendation unanimously adopted by the International Labour Conference in 1955-of combining into one continuous and co-ordinated process medical, psychological, social, educational, vocational guidance, vocational training and placement services, including follow-up . Approaches to the organ- isation of rehabilitation services naturally vary considerably in accordance with the circumstances of each country and several articles devoted to national systems have recently been published in the Inter- national Labour Review.2 The present article describes another such system. W HILE the development of rehabilitation services in some countries has been characterised-particularly in recent years-by the establishment of an over-all national plan to meet the needs of all disabled persons who require rehabilitation, the pattern in Australia is somewhat different. Here rehabilitation services have been developed to meet the needs of special groups. Some of these services seek to meet the total needs of the disabled group with which they are concerned, others only some of those needs. With some services, voluntary organisations and individual efforts have led the way; with others, leadership has come from statutory bodies. Nor has there been a continuous and steady development. The impetus to set up some services grew out of the First World 1 Until his death in May this year Mr. Rowe was Director-General of Social Services of the Commonwealth of Australia. 2 See M. E. SWITZER : Vocational Rehabilitation in the United States , Vol. LXXVII, No. 3, Mar. 1958, p. 189; Ian CAMPBELL: Co-ordination of Rehabilitation Services in Canada , Vol. LXXV, No. 1, Jan. 1957, p. 34 ; Alexandre HULEK : Vocational Rehabilitation of the Disabled in Poland , Vol. LXXIV, No. 1, July 1956, p. 46.