Love Letters to My Profession: An Autoethnography of a CRC

Abstract

Human service organization mission success is dependent on the quality of human talent. The inability of the public vocational rehabilitation program (PVR) to recruit and retain qualified Vocational Rehabilitation Counselors (VRC) imperils its social justice mission assisting people with disabilities to maximize vocational opportunity, independence, and full community inclusion. VRC recruitment and retention has received scholarly attention amassing a body of knowledge primarily focused on micro-level variables. Interventions derived from these studies has had negligible impact. The lack of macro-level systemic research creates a void in understanding how the total lived experience of the PVR psychosocial cultural milieu might mediate, moderate, or amplify this crisis. This qualitative autoethnography is a highly personalized account of one CRC’s (CRC) lived experiences in the PVR psychosocial cultural milieu. It provides insights into why the PVR program is an unattractive professional practice setting. This study advocates increased scholarly attention investigating the macro-level psychosocial cultural environment to identify incongruent, misaligned, and maladaptive features contributing to VRC failure to thrive. This research is essential to inform psychosocial cultural milieu transformational realignment to create practice environments that support VRC recruitment, retention, and professional thriving. People with disabilities served by the PVR program are entitled to receive services from qualified VRC professionally empowered to help them achieve their full vocational potential.