Philip Connolly
So far removed from all that we went through
And I tread a troubled track
My odds are stacked I’ll go back to black
In these few short words, Amy Winehouse sang of the distance between her and her experiences. Perhaps consumed by what Churchill called ‘the black dog’ of depression, she sang ‘I’ll go back o black’. It could be, however, that it’s the work of Dame Carol Black we need to go back to, her Review of the Health of the Working-age Population from 2008.
Dame Carol is the Government’s czar on the health of the working age population, and it’s her ultimate goal that everyone should have access to work-related health support. Amy Winehouse famously sang that she didn’t want to go to rehab, but of course her legions of fans and well-wishers did want her to go. Many people may think that rehab is simply for the drink or drug problems of the rich and famous, but that’s because for most employees there is no vocational rehabilitation available to them. Vocational rehabilitation is simply whatever helps someone with a health problem to stay at, return to or remain in work:
an idea and an approach as much as an intervention or a service.
Sometimes that intervention can be as simple as saying “Stop – don’t resign, lets find out if anything can be done”.
Yet even that simple service fails to be delivered.
