by Gerd Vonderach, Vera Herrmann and Eileen Beyer

Vocational rehabilitation is part of a differentiated socio-political system of assistance for people who are physically, mentally or emotionally disabled or at risk of disability. An empirical study carried out in vocational training centres found remarkable differences in the individual significance of vocational retraining, which is carried out there for the purpose of occupational reintegration.

The entitlement to vocational rehabilitation in the event of a disability or impending disability as a result of an illness or accident can be seen as a particular achievement of the welfare state in the Federal Republic of Germany. The most common provider, i.e. the authoriser and financier of vocational rehabilitation measures, is the Federal Employment Agency, followed by the pension insurance funds and the accident insurance funds. Vocational rehabilitation centres on vocational training measures to enable initial vocational integration or to enable the reintegration of people who were or are already in employment. The first purpose is served by vocational training centres, the second purpose is served in a special way by a network of vocational training centres, which was expanded in West Germany in the 1970s and has also been extended to the new Federal States since 1990. In Lower Saxony there are the Weser-Ems (Bookholzberg), Bad Pyrmont and Goslar vocational training centres, and in Bremen there is the Bremen-Lesum (Friedehorst) vocational training centre.

The average age of the participants, around a quarter of whom are women, is just under thirty. Most of them are skilled workers with a secondary school leaving certificate who are no longer able to carry out their academic appointments. The most common types of disability are musculoskeletal disorders. The proportion of mental disorders and skin diseases, especially allergies, is increasing.

In a research project funded by the state of Lower Saxony, we investigated the life history significance of vocational retraining in academic appointments. To this end, open biographical interviews were conducted with more than 30 male and female rehabilitants at the Bookholzberg and Bad Pyrmont Vocational Training Centres. The evaluation of the interviews led to the development of case histories and cross-case case series, which revealed remarkable differences in the subjective perception of the significance of vocational retraining in life history. We were able to identify various case series, each with typical patterns of goal orientation, which the rehabilitants primarily pursued with their new vocational training.

Restoration of an occupational normality

In the view of these rehabilitants, who made up about a quarter of our interviewees, the reason for their new vocational training was the interruption of their previous normality in terms of their employment and occupational biography. Their disability often arose from an abrupt event that decisively changed their previous life, such as a serious work or road accident or a heart attack. In other cases, it is chronic and progressive illnesses or wear and tear processes, sometimes also allergies, which no longer allow them to remain in their previous field of work. What these retrainees, who most closely correspond to the socio-political mission statement of vocational rehabilitation, have in common is the goal of realising a normality and continuity of academic appointments in the future that is equivalent to their previous circumstances. To this end, they are forced to accept vocational retraining and are grateful for the support they receive at the vocational rehabilitation centre.

The majority of these rehabilitants are former skilled workers for whom a qualified academic appointment serves to secure their own or their family's livelihood and at the same time enables them to identify with the content of their work and their profession and to find a satisfactory social placement.

Another group is made up of male rehabilitants who, prior to their disability, worked in physically strenuous semi-skilled jobs without vocational training. They now dare to experiment with academic appointments; however, they would also fulfil their family breadwinner role as early retirees or with unqualified work if necessary.

Re-entry into the labour market and promotion

For another case series, the need to change careers, which resulted from their disability, also gave rise to the unexpected opportunity of an academic appointment through further vocational training in their previous field of activity. Our study involved former bricklayers who were unable to remain in their academic appointment for health reasons and then took the opportunity to train as a construction technician. The unfamiliar learning situation involved increased effort and coping skills for them, also with regard to the arrangement with family life in view of the extensive homework. The seemingly achievable goal of an improved professional-social placement and a challenging academic appointment released the necessary motivational forces.

Hope for stabilisation

Some rehabilitants had been confronted with psychosomatic illnesses, psychological impairments or addiction problems, especially alcoholism, in earlier phases of their lives or immediately before and during their new academic appointment. However, only in some cases was the mental disability the official reason for authorising vocational rehabilitation. The rehabilitants interviewed for whom the latter was the case had been dealing with mental illnesses and personality disorders over longer periods of time. The consequences of this were the discontinuation of academic appointments and training, psychotherapeutic treatment and hospitalisation in psychiatric clinics. It was not possible to achieve professional continuity and stability here; the resulting professional disqualification and lack of prospects in turn exacerbated the psychological impairment.

With vocational retraining, these rehabilitants try to choose an academic appointment that is suitable for them and in which they hope to realise a normal biography. Their coping concept includes qualified professional work that enables self-confidence and material independence. Such rehabilitants require special attention and support during their stay at the academic appointment centre and in their subsequent attempt to reintegrate into work.

The chance of a new start

For a good third of our interviewees, it was primarily dissatisfaction with their previous professional or life development that led them to seek a new academic appointment. Their physical disability or health impairment provided them with a welcome opportunity to achieve the desired new start in their academic appointment by obtaining authorisation for vocational rehabilitation.

In the majority of cases, it was their previous occupational development that these rehabilitants sought to correct. Although they had learnt an occupation, they had not practised it for a long time due to a lack of academic appointments or poor employment opportunities, but instead worked in various semi-skilled jobs, some of which led to unemployment. They tried to escape this employment situation, which they saw as an academic appointment, by retraining. During retraining, these rehabilitants came to identify with their chosen new academic appointment, which was naturally consolidated when they subsequently succeeded in entering the labour market.

In the case of another group of rehabilitants, one can speak of the subjective perception of a more comprehensive undesirable development in their lives over a longer period of time. The unstable and hopeless phase of life that followed the unsuccessful career start, which in some cases lasted between two and more than twenty years, was characterised by unemployment, illness, jobbing, welfare benefits, marginalisation and isolation. These rehabilitants hoped that a new academic appointment would provide them with autonomy, a better social position and the opportunity to identify themselves professionally.

Single mothers: a new phase in their lives as professionals

This case series, which represents specific female life stories, involves women who married early and gave up their careers because of their children. However, they did not succeed in achieving the desired family normality as the marriages failed. This put the women in a precarious situation as single parents, which they could only cope with through a competently managed poverty economy. Insufficient maintenance payments made it necessary to take on part-time work as far as childcare allowed. However, health problems led to people giving up gainful employment and becoming dependent on social welfare. At the same time, however, they served as a basis for a new vocational training programme as a rehabilitation measure, which the women applied for when their children grew up and it became possible to relieve them of their family duties. The biographical openness they wanted is combined with a willingness to be flexible and learn. They hope that starting a career will open up a new phase in their lives in terms of material improvement, social recognition and fulfilment of their academic appointments.

The search for individualisation: self-discovery in academic appointments?

For some of the younger rehabilitants with a secondary school education in particular, their biographical and occupational orientation is primarily determined by the search for opportunities for individualisation in terms of occupational content or by the realisation of an already completed reorientation from which they expect a sense of fulfilment in their academic appointment. Establishing career continuity seems to be difficult to reconcile with this, as does the current intention to start a family.

The importance of individualisation in terms of occupational content comes to the fore at different stages of life: as a motivation for retraining, as an educational process during retraining or as a consequence of academic appointment discontinuity years after retraining. At the time of our interviews, some of these rehabilitants were retraining and starting a new career out of the motivation to realise an academic appointment they had already found. Another group of rehabilitants, on the other hand, vacillated during and/or after retraining between a vocational biographical adjustment to their current situation that promised material security and the continued search for ways to fulfil the meaning of their occupation.

The astonishing diversity in the biographical goal orientation of new vocational training should be taken into account in the training and support practice of the vocational training centres and beforehand in the initiation of the rehabilitation process and the counselling of those affected by the rehabilitation providers. This applies in particular to the question of finding the right occupation, the need for targeted support services and the decision on the appropriate training centre in each individual case.

The authors

Prof. Dr Gerd Vonderach (54), an industrial sociologist at the Institute of Sociology, was appointed to the University of Oldenburg in 1974. After studying social sciences, he initially worked as a research assistant at the Oldenburg University of Education and received an academic appointment at the University of Bremen in 1972. From there he returned to Oldenburg. His research focus: Sociology of work and occupation, rural and agricultural sociology, history of labour market policy, biography research. - Dr Vera Herrmann (34) initially worked at the Research Association for Agricultural Policy and Agricultural Sociology in Bonn after completing her social science studies and doctorate in Oldenburg. In 1994, she moved to the project "Life History and Academic Rehabilitation". Research stays at the Universities of Aberdeen and Basel. - Eileen Beyer (28), Master's degree in English, Sociology and German Studies, was involved in the project as a research assistant.

Case series formation

Different life-history significance of the academic retraining of rehabilitants

A. The experience of disability as the primary subjective cause of new vocational training

Different patterns of goal orientation:
1. Aspiration to restore occupational-biographical continuity
2. Aspiration to restore occupational-biographical continuity
3. Opportunity for occupational-social advancement in the restoration of occupational-biographical continuity
4. Efforts to stabilise life history and occupational biography despite disposition to psychological impairment

B. The experience of unsuccessful career placement and continuity as the primary subjective cause of new vocational training

Different patterns of goal orientation:
5. Aiming to improve placement and continuity in academic appointments
6. Attempting to make a new start in academic appointments after a life history failure
7. Attempt by non-working single parents to make a new start in their careers/biographies after a prolonged period of poverty
8. Aimed realisation of academic appointment individualisation and reorientation
9. Unfinished vacillation between academic appointment adjustment and the search for career individualisation opportunities