Vocational Rehabilitation - Better Va Management Needed to Help Disabled Veterans Find Jobs: Hrd-92-100 (Paperback)

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO assessed the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) vocational rehabilitation program, focusing on: (1) the program's effectiveness in helping disabled veterans obtain and maintain employment; (2) reasons for the high drop-out rate of veterans who apply for the program; and (3) VA standards for measuring program success and for providing timely services. GAO found that VA: (1) focuses its program on training, although legislation requires that it also provide job placement services; (2) arrangements with other agencies that offer job search activities have produced only limited job search assistance; (3) does not know why 71 percent of the 202,000 veterans accepted into the rehabilitation program dropped out before obtaining suitable employment; (4) does not collect sufficient data or document drop-out reasons and has not made any special efforts to identify key reasons why veterans drop out of the rehabilitation program; and (5) has instituted a systematic approach to monitoring and assessing the program, but it is not very helpful, since it uses previous actual performance as the standard for the following year's performance, does not consider all program participants in measuring program effectiveness, and has not established standards in all necessary areas.