BA6054 Disability management and Social Work in times of crisis and conflict. The Ukrainian case

Disability management (DM) is a professional approach to action and counselling aimed at shaping individual and organizational learning processes in the context of work-related integration. The aim is to maintain or restore people's employability and to enable them to participate in the labor market by providing professional support to promote their reintegration into the workforce. Main objective of DM is to support employees with severe health conditions and injuries, resulting in or preventing (multiple) chronical conditions, mental illnesses, and disabilities, at the workplace (stay-at-work) as well as in the process of return-to-work. DM has developed as a comprehensive approach which is used for complex case topics with a high density of actors involved to reach sustainability in return-to-work or stay-at-work. Based on a person-centered approach the object of a comprehensive DM is to arrive at a case-specific solution for workplace-integration, which responds to each employee's needs – social, vocational, and health-related –, and will be realized with the support of corporate actors, e.g. company health- and case-managers, human resource specialists, and extra-corporate actors, e.g. disability managers from social or private insurances.

Expertise

- social services, welfare state and legal system

- social problems and life situations

- process design models: methods, procedures and interventions

Technical and methodological competence

- ability to design processes

Social competence

- ability to cooperate

Self-competence

- ability to (self-)reflect

- Ability to expand knowledge in a self-regulated manner

The module provides knowledge on the origins and development of disability management (DM) as an approach to employment-oriented workplace-integration. DM has been developed in the U.S., Canady, and Australia from the late 1980s onwards. Since the 2000s it has also been implemented in European countries. During the last decades, different strategies have been developed in DM: the integration model, the separation model, the increased flexibility model and the outsourcing-insourcing model. DM as a professional approach requires core competencies in the following areas: methods, law, work, target groups/diversity and health. The module will present and discuss international DM-research with a focus on concept, methods and instruments in DM. In addition, DM concepts and current developments in Switzerland and in the Ukraine will be compared and discussed. In the context of Ukraine, the focus is particularly on the vocational, social and health reintegration and rehabilitation of war veterans. In the context of Switzerland, the focus is primarily on current practices in companies and in organizations of workplace-integration, but also on the situation and needs of Ukraine refugees regarding workplace-integration.

• presentations
• discussions
• readings

• Attendance of the BA6025 Sustainable Global Social Work module is recommended.
• As the module is conducted in English together with students and lecturers from various universities in Ukraine, basic English language skills are required.

passed / failed

• Geisen, T., & Harder, H. G. (Eds.). (2011). Disability Management and Workplace Integration. New Perspectives. Fanham: Gower Publishing.
• R. Escorpizo, S. Brage, D. Homa, & G. Stucki (Eds.). (2015). Handbook of Vocational Rehabilitation and Disability Evaluation. Application and Implementation of the ICF. Cham/Heidelberg: Springer.

Blended learning format with students and teachers from the School of Social Work FHNW in Olten and from different Ukraine Universities.