A new MA degree in case management should increase professionalism in the rehabiliation sector, says Lynn Rouse
Adversarial relationships and question marks over cost-effectiveness aren't the only factors preventing a wider take-up of rehabilitation in the UK. The absence of professional qualifications for practicing case managers are also concerns of employers, insurers and solicitors. But this could change with the launch of the UK's first masters-level rehabilitation qualification.
As fledgling professions in their own right, medical case management and vocational consultancy will struggle to attract and retain competent individuals unless there is a shift in status for these disciplines as a career choice. Consequently, the establishment of an MA degree in Case Management for Health and Employment at the University of Brighton is an important step to closing this qualifications gap. It should also enable case managers to operate on an equal footing to the solicitors, insurers and medical professionals with whom they deal, and to pave the way for formal regulations of practising individuals.
"Rehabilitation has been around in the UK for a while now, but practitioners have suffered from a lack of recognition," explains Paul Woodward, employers' liability practice leader at AIG Europe. "Certainly, the introduction of this degree will provide that recognition."
Resulting from three years of close consultation between the university and AIG Medical and Rehabilitation (AIGMR), this course has its first intake of 10 case managers enrolled and ready to start the two-to-three years of part-time study required by its structured, modular programme.
"We have tried to develop the course so that most of the modules can be taken at weekends - we did not want to put off potential students by requiring them to take weeks out of their work schedules," says Melanie Summers, managing director of AIGMR, stressing that this is particularly important for self-employed case managers.
So how did the degree course become a reality? "We first spoke to the dean at Brighton University in 2002 to ask if it would be possible to create a course to capture both medical case management and vocational consultancy," explains Andy Whittington, AIGMR's business development manager.
The first challenge was to ascertain whether enough course material could be generated to warrant a masters degree. "Ironically, we found that rather than there not being enough potential content, there was too much," explains Whittington. "So our first challenge was to decide how to structure the course and bring the various themes together. These themes include: sickness absence; the benefits and welfare system; underpinning legislation here in the UK; and psycho-social factors, which are very important when considering rehabilitation for different people."
Course objectives
Summers says that the key objective of the course is for those who do it to be able to manage individual cases from start to finish without the need to hand them over to a vocational consultant. "One of the aims is for vocational consultants to become case managers and vice versa. At the moment, there is very little opportunity for professional development." And there are other essential reasons for introducing formal qualifications, she explains. "Retention of case managers is quite difficult because the career opportunities have not been there, like they are in nursing - for example, there are no NHS initiatives to try and keep people in their posts."
New degrees and professional exams should also help quash the fear emerging over incompetent individuals setting themselves up as rehabilitation professionals. "At the moment, anyone can theoretically set themselves up as a case manager," says Summers, "because there are no requirements for specialist qualifications - which means that, as a profession, it is lagging way behind the other professions we deal with on a daily basis, such as solicitors and insurers." Additional benefits should be felt by EL insurers who fully support rehab but are often challenged over questions of case manager objectivity."
It will help to establish the independence of services provided," explains Woodward. "When we started providing rehabilitation, it was viewed by some as an insurance company trying to badger injured people back into the workplace before they were ready to do so."
Therefore, he feels that "properly qualified individuals" will boost acceptance levels of rehabilitation by injured parties, trade unions and claimant solicitors. "Also, from an EL underwriter's perspective, it should give us much more confidence in the services provided by case managers - allowing us to know that an injury will be dealt with properly by people with suitable qualifications. It will help with the assessment of risk from the word go."
Woodward believes this course could be the first step towards regulation. "Rehabilitation has to be regulated because we all want properly trained individual case managers, and trust is very important when dealing with injured parties."
So with the foundations now laid for regulation to follow, Whittington concludes:"The main aim of the degree course is to increase the number of regulated and qualified case managers in the UK. By doing a course of this nature, practitioners will have their experience and knowledge validated and gain greater job satisfaction and ownership of what they do. They will feel themselves to be a real part of a growing industry."
Lynn Rouse is deputy editor of Post Magazine This article first appeared in Post Magazine.
