RETURN-TO-WORK PROJECT

Ms THOMPSON (Reynell) (15:43): I rise today to draw to the attention of the house a report recently released by SA Unions entitled 'Retraining injured workers for employment project.' This was a project funded by the WorkCover return-to-work scheme and is an important development in finding effective ways to enable workers who have been absent from work for a long time after workplace injury to return to work and, indeed, to develop a new career in which they can succeed and also have access to sustainable employment.

There were 50 participants in this project and they had an average of 578 days from their injury to starting with the project. I think we all know that people who have been away from work for that period of time find it very difficult to successfully re-enter the workplace. In fact, once people have been away from work for as little as three months, they only have a 50 per cent chance of returning to work. The fact that all these people, who came from community services and the manufacturing industry, have been able to gain the skills that will enable them to return to work satisfactorily is very important. I am sure you will be pleased to know, sir, that many of them have already gained sustainable employment.

An important part of the project was to look at ways the system has to change to support injured workers to engage in effective retraining opportunities. As with people on social welfare, the approach in the past has often been to look at any job that a worker can get and put them in there. In the case of injured workers, this often leads to a re-injury. They can become very dispirited if they are not able to return to their original job, and there does not seem to have been enough emphasis on looking at what skills the workers have and the sorts of alternatives there might be for them to find satisfactory employment.

It was a fairly intensive project. Three project workers worked with these 50 people for 18 months, and they had to engage in extensive consultation with their rehab providers, their case managers, and sometimes their medical people, as well as their claims managers, and a lot of effort had to go into supporting the workers to develop their confidence so that they could engage in other work.

Many of them had been severely affected by mental health problems during the period of their absence and needed a lot of support to take on a new challenge; in fact, mental health was a compounding issue for at least 80 per cent of the participants. They felt that they had been stigmatised, they were bored and confused, and medication and pain were often barriers, and all this had to be taken into account in developing a training program for the workers.

Some of them faced homelessness, and the majority of them faced financial hardship from the length of time that they had been away from their full wage earning work. The project also found that access to technology proved a major barrier for most participants, particularly once they started thinking about training and applying for jobs. It was very important that they had wrap-around services to support them with all their training needs, as well as all their human needs, to reclaim their identity as effective members of their community.

I have great admiration for Rebecca Ballantyne of Morphett Vale who spoke at the launch of the report. She completed a Certificate IV in Community Services (Community Work) and has now achieved a placement she really enjoys. Rebecca said that one of the problems she was experiencing was that her previous work was her dream job and that she felt quite bereft when the career she had always wanted seemed to have been taken away from her as a result of the injury. However, with the help of the project workers and TAFE lecturers, she has now found a new and very satisfying role and is a new person.