Rehabilitation Counsellor
What the work is
Assists people experiencing injuries, disabilities, health conditions and social disadvantage to achieve their personal, educational and vocational goals. Provides specialist counselling, rehabilitation and resource coordination services to maximise people's independence and inclusion in employment and other community settings.
Would you enjoy the work?
These are the main tasks in the official description. Mark how each one sounds to you.
- Conducts assessments and evaluations to determine clients' psychosocial and cognitive ability, vocational interests and psychological wellbeing
- Ascertains clients' functional capacity to develop appropriate rehabilitation plans
- Works with clients in relation to their career, study or employment options by providing information and resources in these areas
- Provides individual counselling to clients to address emotional and psychological challenges related to their injuries, disabilities, health conditions or social disadvantage
- Assists clients, their family members, and other Professionals to develop rehabilitation plans
- Assists people with disability and neurodivergent individuals to find suitable employment by collaborating with employers and clients to ensure reasonable adjustments and provision of ongoing support
Try it
A simulation and a case study from this kind of work, set in a community counselling service with small, quiet rooms and a busy front desk. They are fictional.
The kind of days you could have
Good days
- A client who struggled to speak in the first session laughs about something in the fifth
- Someone leaves with a plan and a small, real sense of relief
- A referral you made connects a person with exactly the help they needed
Hard days
- Carrying other people's heavy stories home in your head after a long day
- A client stops coming and you never learn how things turned out
- A full caseload, a waiting list and a person who needs more time than you have
Written by Career Calling as a general guide. Real roles vary by employer and place.
Work a mission
Step into a simulated workplace in this field, with a brief from your manager.
Description and tasks: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Occupation Standard Classification for Australia, 2024, Version 1.0 (opens another site), occupation 261135, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. The skill guide above is our plain English summary.