Vocational Rehabilitation: VA Has Opportunities to Improve Services, but Faces Significant Challenges

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Veterans Affairs' Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment (VR&E) program has taken on heightened importance due, in large measure, to the number of servicemembers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq with serious injuries and their need for vocational rehabilitation and employment assistance. This statement draws on over 20 years of GAO's reporting on VA's provision of vocational rehabilitation and employment assistance to American veterans and focuses primarily on the results of two recent GAO reports. The first, issued in June 2004, commented on the report of the VA-sponsored VR&E Task Force, which performed a comprehensive review of VR&E activities and made extensive recommendations that, if implemented, would affect virtually every aspect of VR&E's operations. The second, issued in January 2005, focused on the steps VA has taken and the challenges it faces in providing services to seriously injured veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.