States Vocational Rehab

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I am just wondering, how many times you have to call the state voc rehab headquarters before someone helps you. the voc rehab person i have sits on his butt all day and does nothing to help me, give me some advice

That is why I wish I never went to voc rehab. They did nothing but waste my time, set me up with the most incompetent job coaches and also had me work in a total hellhole of a workshop. I absolutely did not belong there and only got very angry and frustrated while languishing in that horrible place. All those idiots had to do was let me finish school and let me receive training for a real job for real people. Voc rehab was totally useless and unnecessary for me.

Actually I went through the VA (Veteran's Association) Voc Rehab program.
It was great, I got a BA degree, and they payed for school and all related expenses, but I am service connected though.

Do STATES actually offer similar services?

The Canadian equivalent services have been great for me so far. I got my dx through them.

It's ashame because it's really a great idea but it's so badly run. I went to this place called Jevs services that helped me out with getting a job I wanted, but I had to go through the Office of Vocational rehab to get funding from them. It took this woman like a month to get in touch with me and I ended up yelling at her in a message I left her, and they set me up with someone who was about to retire. lol They also did that to this other person I knew who was getting funded by them. It's like ummm y would you set me up with someone who is going to retire like halfway through this process and then I'm going to have get used to a new person? lol Also the counseler I had never came to the meetings I had with my teachers at the JEVS site and she was supposed to be keeping track of my progress. lol I also had to wait for like 1 month just for the funding to go through originally. I got really depressed sitting at home like that.

Then I went back to Jevs because I was having trouble getting adjusted to that job and I had heard that they could give me a job coach. But jevs was basically just going to give me some job at Wawa that I didn't want because I wanted to stay at the nursing home. (I'm planning on becoming a CNA and a nurse eventually and working at Wawa is not meaningful for me) They said that was the only thing they could do for me and Jevs was like an hour and a half away so I missed my staff xmas party to go there and get no help. Then OVR calls me like a week later and starts sending me these letters about a job coach, but I didn't want any more help from them because I'd been jerked around so much.

Also they changed the public transportation funding after I had already brought a transpass. I give them credit because their idea for helping people is good but they don't know how to execute it well. Maybe they don't have enough funding or whatever.

I've never used the Voc-Rehab services (and I'm not too far from you, geographically, in AL). I *have* tried using the state's Mental Health services, and I think it's all way too underfunded. I was told on my last visit, which was about 5 years ago, that they don't offer individual counseling anymore, only group counseling. (I also didn't have a ASD diagnosis at the time either.)

The Black Hole for adults really does exist... all the services you could get as a child vanish when you grow up.

br0wser wrote:

I guess that's Alabama for you

It's a pain in the butt a lot of times, especially if you decide to do some temporary work while looking for something permanent. Sometimes you get some incompetent job coach who won't do their job, and blames you for it, when you did your part of the bargain. All too often, you're playing phone tag with them as they're never in the office, or they call when you're not home.