Vocational rehabilitation in the 21st century: Skills professionals need for systems success

The public vocational rehabilitation (VR) system in the United States faces many challenges in the 21st century. To prevail amid such challenges, rehabilitation professionals will need to embrace several specific skills (anticipating change, engaging in more generative than adaptive learning to make rehabilitation organizations true "learning organizations" and adoption of a comprehensive ecological framework for planning VR system change). As a preface to understanding these skills, this paper discusses the current developmental stage of the public VR system, followed by lessons learned in its first century of existence, as well as some logical propositions about the future of VR.