GENEZA I ROZWÓJ REHABILITACJI ZAWODOWEJ ORAZ ZATRUDNIANIA OSÓB Z NIEPEŁNOSPRAWNOŚCIĄ NA ZIEMIACH POLSKICH
THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF VOCATIONAL REHABILITATION AND THE EMPLOYMENT OF PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES IN POLAND

Author(s): Marcin Garbat
Subject(s): Economy, National Economy, Human Resources in Economy, Socio-Economic Research
Published by: Polskie Towarzystwo Ekonomiczne w Zielonej Górze
Keywords: vocational rehabilitation; people with disability; employment
Summary/Abstract: Vocational rehabilitation is an integral part of comprehensive rehabilitation. Already during rehabilitation one should carry out the so-called professional preorientation using the possibilities offered by occupational therapy in rehabilitation centers. Attempts to work is the best practical method to determine the time and the result of the work. Professional preorientation should be introduced as soon as possible, because one often loses a lot of effort and money to train people with disabilities in the direction to which they are not prepared mentally and physically, or do not have an adequate level of general education. Professional preorientation also allows to acquaint with job possibilities at one’s place of residence. Although workshops for the disabled appeared in their modern form, barely a little more than a hundred and fifty years ago, their origin dates back to at least the Middle Ages. The word rehabilitation appeared for the first time at the Anglo-Saxons after the First World War, and it was an accurate term. The Latin "habilitas" means mobility, agility, and the prefix "re" reflexiveness. Rehabilitation was used at that time to describe restoring of fitness of military war disabled persons. The term was introduced in 1918 by Douglas C. McMurtie, director of the Red Cross for the Disabled in New York, to describe the reeducational school for rehabilitation of disabled soldiers. A little later the New York Federal Office of Vocational Rehabilitation was founded, which described the rehabilitation as the need to restore the best possible physical, mental, social, vocational and economic usefulness. Since then, the term rehabilitation has been used in today's sense of the word. Since then it includes within its operation not only war veterans, but all people with disabilities.

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