Supported Employment in Norway and in the other Nordic countries

Supported Employment (SE) was implemented within the vocational rehabilitation systems of the Nordic countries at a different pace and to various degrees. Sweden and Norway took to SE most rapidly during the 1990s, followed by Finland and Iceland. In Denmark, SE is still virtually an unknown concept, although there are practices that resemble and are inspired by SE. Several reports [1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 16-21, 24, 25, 28, 29, 32-36, 39, 41] have indicated that SE in the Nordic countries is a successful approach to support disabled job seekers1 to get and keep a job in the ordinary labour market. However, SE is still not a large proportion of all work-related measures for people with vocational disabilities; in the Nordic countries the traditional sheltered sector and ` train then place' measures of vocational rehabilitation still prevail [19]. SE is typically provided as an " add-on" service by agencies that financially and skills-wise are based on traditional forms of pre-vocational training, sheltered workshops and municipality day care activities. To make quality-based SE services available on a widespread basis, the national levels will require strong government support. The policy-administrative levels must address the domination of the traditional vocational rehabilitation model and define the particular inclusion skills competence to be expected by the professional job coach/employment specialist of SE.