Army’s Wounded Warriors Careers
Returning Wounded Soldiers Face New Challenges in Their Career Development.
Since the launch of the Global War on Terrorism, more than 3,000 U.S. service men and women, mostly soldiers in the Army, have been killed and over 30,000 have been injured. Among the latter group, more than 1,500 have suffered severe injuries or trauma, including amputation, post-traumatic stress disorder, blindness, burns, spinal cord injuries and traumatic brain injuries. These soldiers qualify for the Army’s Wounded Warrior (AW2) program, an effort to assist soldiers as they make their way through the rehabilitation process, retire from the military and transition to civilian life. AW2 caseworkers help soldiers and their families address such issues as deciding where to live, adapting their homes to meet their needs, accessing medical and psychiatric care, and navigating the Army’s benefit programs. One significant challenge both to the Army and to soldiers and families has been determining what type of career the soldiers will pursue following such significant disability.
In Response, Mobility is Partnering With the National Organization on Disability to Develop AW2 Careers.
To address this challenge, Mobility is partnering with the National Organization on Disability to develop the AW2 Careers demonstration, which seeks to provide intensive career planning, management and support to returning soldiers and their families. The demonstration will take place in three areas across the country that have high concentrations of soldiers returning with severe disabilities. AW2 Careers is intended to complement other efforts underway to ensure that soldiers and their families are able to take full advantage of the resources available to them to find jobs, enroll in education and begin their careers. The goals of the initiative are to increase the number of soldiers who receive high-quality career planning services; access existing employment, educational and training resources; engage in appropriate and meaningful work; and have positive attitudes about their career prospects and ability to achieve their goals. As the demonstration gets underway, Mobility will provide technical assistance to the AW2 Careers program staff in the form of developing resource guides, engaging experts from the disability and workforce development fields, hosting cross-site meetings for staff to share challenges and ideas, and developing a case management and tracking system for use by program staff.
Mobility is Evaluating AW2 Careers To Develop Best Practices for Serving Wounded Soldiers.
Mobility will conduct an evaluation of the AW2 Careers initiative. The evaluation will assess:
- Whether the program is implemented as intended at each site and what factors facilitate or hinder successful implementation;
- To what extent the initiative increases the level and quality of the career planning services returning soldiers receive; and
- What employment and educational outcomes soldiers achieve.
To answer these questions, Mobility will conduct surveys and focus groups with soldiers, interview staff, observe program activities, and analyze data on soldiers’ characteristics, the services they receive and their employment outcomes. Mobility will produce a report on the AW2 Careers experience that draws lessons about how best to support soldiers’ successful transition to employment and further education through program practice and policy.
