Brian Preston: A word from the section chair

Well, we're back from Nashville and I have heard mainly good feedback about the 2005 IARP Forensic Conference. By all accounts, it was one of the better Forensic Conferences, with the primary concern expressed being "I wish I could have gone to both break-out sessions (held at the same time)!" Excellent pre-conference sessions provided functional insights into Medicare stet-asides and evaluation measures. Attorney Gary Gober provided dynamic perspective to the paradigm shift of rehabilitation expert testimony; Dr. Dan Doleys shard his expertise regarding the neurology, psychology, and management of pain: Bill Scott presented insightful professional and personal perspectives on aging with a spinal cord injury; and attorney/occupational therapist Barbara Kornblau reviewed ethics in expert testimony by comparing different types of forensic rehabilitation cases. Many great break-out sessions were well attended and the Ethics Roundtable, hosted by Music City's very own Minnie Pearly and Dolly Parton (who knew they were closet rehab experts?), gave the packed audience a chance to discuss several ethical dilemmas in a fun way rather than in a dry, choke on your toast manner.

I want to thank the many fine and talented people who helped put this conference together starting with the hardest working Board in the country: John Meltzer, Trudy Koslow, Greg LeRoy, Steve Shedlin, and John Berg; Conference Queen, Dianne Simmons Grab; and the conference committee: Bob Pare, Nancy Hughes, Donna Flannery, Jinnie Lawson, Ann Wallace, Judi Drew, Stan Owing, and George Cyphers. In addition, the team at IARP Headquarters performs innumerable tasks in managing the conferences. Thanks also to the others who volunteered as CEU monitors and those who performed other tasks.

As was mentioned in the last issue of RehabPro, the 2006 Forensic Conference will be the first weekend of November 2006 in Scottsdale, Arizona. Steve Shedlin will be our fearless leader for the development of that conference program. We are always interested in topic ideas and ideas for good speakers; it is often the ideas of IARP's members that build into a conference theme.

In the Journal section of this issue of the RehabPro, Dr. Craig Johnston has provided an article on his research into the training and education of vocational experts at the university graduate program level. This is an interesting topic for those of us who look back at our rehabilitation training programs and recall little, if any, focus on private rehabilitation practice, much less on providing expert testimony. However, I have seen more and more rehabilitation counseling programs offer courses in various issues related to case management and disability management.

My own experiences as a graduate student at the University of North Carolina (UNC) - Chapel Hill in the 1980s echoes that story. As an adjunct professor at UNC, I taught a course on life care planning and one on case management, both of which had been established as electives in the 1990s. I found that some students had limited interest in private rehabilitation issues; partly, I suspect, because they had had little exposure to them at that time. Several of those students, as well as professional peers, have told me that, although they did not appreciate the private rehab courses at the time, they later found them to be some of the most valuable courses they took in graduate school.

It seems to me that forensic rehabilitation is strongly linked to graduate education in the rehabilitation professions. They are natural bed fellows in the sense that development of a reasonable expert opinion is anchored in the strong application of the basics of rehabilitation; basics whish are taught in the graduate programs. Vocational expert work depends on building strong foundations and carefully following basic practices learned at the Master's degree level. This often ensures the most defensible opinion in court. I hope that more rehabilitation counseling programs expand their training in forensic rehabilitation and life care planning.

The Forensic Listserv continues to perform its function as a platform for continuous dialogues for the Forensic Section members who sign on. We are monitoring the new software and trying to work out a few minor bugs. The Listserv welcomes dynamic respectful dialogue.

The Board will be reviewing its policies and procedures and will be discussing development of a report repository and a document library over the coming months. We look forward to working with the new Life Care Planning section. By the time you read this, you may have the ballot for nominees for the open Board positions. I encourage all Forensic Section members to please participate in the elections.

Overall, the coming year looks to be full of possibilities!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wood County Project
By Ken Reagles

In December 2003, there was a thread on the forensic listserv about using length of unemployment as a predictor of rehabilitation success. We were led to The Wood County Project by Ken Reagles, who was a research director at the University of Wisconsin at the time of the project. The Wood County Project was a 5-year longitudinal study evaluating the impact of expanded rehabilitation resources and services upon selected communities in Wisconsin. The project was conducted during the 1960s', and published in 1969. The IARP Forensic section web site contains the abstract, preface and foreword. Selected portions of the 2 volume sudy that pertain to the issue of unemployment as a predictor of rehabilitation success are also included under Correlates of Rehabilitation Gain(pages 146-149). The demographic variable of "recency of unemployment" is depicted in Table 50. You may draw your own conclusions.

John Meltzer
IARP Forensic Section Chair
Click here to be linked to The Wood County Project

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Amicus Brief
Amicus Motion
Amicus Brief Order of the Nevada Supreme Court

Document-Opening Tip: There are two ways to access either or both of these two documents: (1) left-click on the link (the conventional way) if you want to open the document into your web browser window, or (2) right-click on the link and select "save as," if you want to save a copy of it onto your desktop, or into another directory on your computer, before opening it into its own window.

Forensic Focus Archives - Previous Articles.

 
 
IARP FORENSIC NEWS
Table of Contents

• Providing Vocational Expertise in the Resolution of Employment Law Cases,
  Angela M. Heitzman, M.A., C.R.C.
• The Americans With Disabilities Act: A Brief Discussion of Recent United States Supreme Court Decisions,
  Sherry Browning, CRC, LPC
• Letter from the Chair (Challenges of Member Training and Education),
  Randall Thomas, Forensic Chair
• Field Internet Searching,
  Mary Barros-Bailey, MA CRC, CDMS
• Forensic Section Annual Seminar Breaks New Ground,
  Robert H. Taylor, MA, CRC, CDMS CPC, CLCP