Sure.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. It's a pleasure to appear in front of you today.
My name is Tricia Gueulette. I'm the national contract manager of CanVet Vocational Rehabilitation Services. I'd like to take some time this afternoon to tell you about our services and our role with Canadian veterans.
My company, WCG International Consultants, is a team of approximately 150 career development and vocational rehabilitation professionals. We began in British Columbia in 1995 as a small consulting firm and have grown over the years to provide return-to-work and human resources services on behalf of all levels of government as well as insurance organizations, companies, and non-profit agencies. Since 1995 we have placed over 53,000 people seeking work into long-term meaningful employment.
In 2007 WCG teamed with March of Dimes Canada and Innovative Rehabilitation Consultants, IRC, forming a joint venture called CanVet VR Services, which combined 40 years of experience to bid on a request for proposal to deliver targeted vocational rehabilitation services to Canadian veterans and their spouses. In light of the fact that Canada has new veterans from Bosnia, Rwanda, and Afghanistan, these services were not being provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs. This new program is part of their broader rehabilitation program, and in 2009 we were delighted to be awarded the contract.
With respect to our joint venture, WCG is the contract lead and manager, and has overseen the development and maintenance of our comprehensive case management system, called CaseFLO, which is linked into the older Veterans Affairs client services delivery network system. CaseFLO is an integrated web-based tool that allows our customers to gain operational efficiencies, manage their finances, and generate up-to-the-second management reporting.
As well, WCG oversees the financial administration for our partners and all financial payments to our clients. We also provide direct client service in British Columbia and to clients living outside Canada who are referred to us from a Veterans Affairs case manager. Our partner, IRC, provides services across the prairies, and March of Dimes operates in Ontario, Quebec, and the Atlantic region. Our overall vision is to provide comprehensive, individualized, reasonable, and cost-effective measures to eligible clients that will assist them to prepare for suitable and gainful civilian employment.
My understanding is that a client who eventually is referred to CanVet from Veterans Affairs generally has been medically released from the Canadian Forces--National Defence. Following that release process, which could take up to three years, this client may go through SISIP--service income security insurance plan--long-term disability vocational rehabilitation, and then will eventually work with a Veterans Affairs case manager. Many years from the time of injury will have passed by the time these clients are referred to us by the Veterans Affairs case manager.
When a veteran is referred to CanVet, one of our vocational rehabilitation specialists will complete a thorough assessment of his or her medical, psychosocial, vocational, and educational history. Our role is to provide an objective third-party professional opinion on every client's vocational potential back to the VAC case manager. We consult with medical personnel, occupational therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists as required on each file. Our goal is to help every client develop a plan that uses their transferable skills, builds new complementary skills, and will ultimately help them to find long-term sustainable civilian employment in the shortest route possible.
A client's plan could include retraining, job search preparation, job matching through a job developer, assisted job search, and post-employment support once they have become employed. We work with clients all the way through their plan, and CanVet reimburses clients on behalf of Veterans Affairs for eligible costs, such as tuition, books, and supplies.
We started to deliver our services in April of 2009, and since that time more than 1,900 clients have been referred to us. The average age of a client coming through our services is 42. The majority are male and approximately 90% have post-traumatic stress disorder, often in combination with other physical impairments.
Many of our clients have gone through retraining post-injury while waiting to release in the Canadian Forces. Some have gone through additional training while on SISIP long-term disability. Our goal is to assess their current situation and build a plan that takes into account their disability while ultimately helping them back into the Canadian labour force.
Many of the clients currently in our program started their vocational plans in 2010-11, and we have started to see the early referrals complete their plans.
In 2011, 87% of clients who completed their plans and their programs to date had become employed. These clients are employed across many industries, and were able to build on their existing skill sets, often initially developed in the military.
Over the last three years working within the CanVet program, we have learned some real positives. We have developed a solid national approach to working with veterans to help them transition to civilian employment. This includes the creation of a knowledge database within the casebook system of OSI clinics--operational stress injury clinics--and we participate in a Canada-U.S. warrior wellness committee, where the latest information on helping modern-day veterans back to civilian employment is shared.
Veterans involved in the program are becoming employed and the program is seeing good outcomes. CaseFLO, the case management system developed to manage this program, has been an excellent tool and could be easily expanded to benefit all stakeholders. We envision a tool where employers who want to hire veterans could post their job ads, the department could access all client information quickly and easily, and clients could access and self-manage the information they need and send information directly to their files.
There are also some areas we can build on. Our number one priority is veterans' health and well-being as they transition to employment. The reimbursement rules for our clients who are completing plans are challenging and unclear. As well, the rules ask for clients to prepay their expenses and then get reimbursed by CanVet, which eventually gets reimbursed by the department. For most of our clients, who are not working, asking them to prepay large tuition, tool, and textbook bills means they may not be able to go back to training and work their plan. In many cases, clients struggle to meet these payments. Because of situations like this, CanVet has taken it upon itself to sponsor most clients' tuition and pay the institutions directly, which is outside of our contract.
We have also gone outside of our contract to pay for books, accommodation, tutoring, and other things for clients before they're eligible to submit their claims. We felt this was necessary to ensure many of our clients were able to keep going with their plans and to alleviate some of the stress brought on by these rules, which could have aggravated our clients' health.
The second area I believe we can build on is attempting to bring a holistic approach to vocational rehabilitation much sooner for wounded Canadian Forces members. As I mentioned previously, often many years pass from when a Canadian Forces member is injured to when we see them in CanVet. In fact, we have not yet really started to see the injured Canadian Forces members who were in Afghanistan. We know this is coming, and we believe resources should be brought in collectively and sooner. We could all do more.
In summary, I believe there are a couple of items that the committee might want to examine. We know that the demand for these services will increase. It is extremely important to prepare now. We can do this in two ways. Number one, we can ensure the holistic coordination of vocational rehabilitation services from the time of injury, when a Canadian Forces member is still serving, to the time when they're actually working with a Veterans Affairs case manager. Number two, we can make whatever changes are necessary to ensure that the Canadian veterans participating in this program don't face financial hardship or barriers to training from having to prepay their expenses.
I congratulate the committee on the timeliness of this study. We are dealing with complex medical issues in tough economic times, and it will be critical to direct our resources to optimize programming and services for best results.
Thank you very much for inviting me here today. I look forward to answering your questions.
