Thread: Has any one been retrained for employment by Workcover?

hi mate, bummer on the not ready yet front.. unfortunately the changes implemented are always the first things on the list when someone injures themselves......hope all get well sooner than later mate

cheers

gday guys
well i'm trying to get some sort of retraining but so far i've been pounding my head on a brick wall for all the good its done.first i injured my back at work abd kept going with it,and as a result made it much worse which in the end needed surgery to alleviate the pain in the legs from a herniated disk.my case oficer up and quit and left me with no support until a new officer was assigned to me.all he was interested in doing was getting me off the books as it were.i was offered no sort of retraining at all.my employer was hostile from the start and to the finish.i still haven't received all my entitlements from him and probably wont,but i'll let the appropriate authorities deal with him.i dont need anymore stress.workcover offered me a payout as soon as the specialist said the injury was stable[not fixed but stable].i've since rejected their payout offer and put in the hands of my solicitor to pursue.i have a chronic illness already which made my situation even more difficult and with the back injury was not able to return to work.its a bit difficult to drive heavy vehicles when you have limited feeling in you right foot.its just not safe,i even gone to lengths to modify my own vehicle so i can do short trips around town.my former employer said straight out to me and workcover that if i was not 100% i wouldn't be able to return as there was no suitable light duties available.host employer program was a joke as was the intensive pain management course they sent me on.i've lived with chronic pain most of my adult life due to a chronic illness.i think they just put me in the to hard basket and let centerlink deal with me.what will happen to me?i'm only 44 and have been a hard worker all my life,i dont any other way.my mind is keen but my body has all but given up.can anyone offer some good advice as to what i should do now cause i'm sick of having to depend on my wife and i feel ashamed of the situation i'm in.

Hi Don,
PM sent

Originally Posted by It'sNotWorthComplaining!

I lasted approx 10 mins today at work on the return to work plan, doing mundane sheltered workshop stuff, I had a meeting with the OH&S Chief, and his opinion was that I am not quite fit to return to work, and does not want me to have discomfort....
he doesn't mind me not doing the hours requested by the return to work doc and said I am more than welcome if I just want to come in during breaks and see my work mates and sit down and have a chat and cuppa to get me out of the house and keep my sanity.

Sory to hear about your injury INWC.

I have worked in workers compensation in Vic for the past 20+ years and am the manager of a niche claims administrator for self insurers so have some authority to comment on your situation.

A couple of things first off (I am not trying to be harsh - I am being brief to make a few points clear).

You are responsible for your own medical treatment. If you are not happy with the treatment you are getting, you need to get a new referral from your gp or a new gp.

The only workcover doctors you will see are the ones the Agent sends you to for a medical report. This may happen maybe once or twice a year.

If you do not have a rehabilitation provider currently and your employer is unlikely to offer you a job long term then ask your agent if you can be referred for retraining. Your agent will send you a list of not less than 3 providers within 14 days. If they do not you can select your own provider.

Generally speaking once you have been referred to rehabilitation for retraining you will get out of it what you put into it.

I quoted the comments above because it is important that you get any of these variations to your offer of suitable duties in writing. It is important that you talk to your doctor if you are experiencing discomfort. It is not always bad.

If you are unable to cope with the work tasks allocated to you should also see you doctor to get your medical certificate revised. If you fail to do so you could find yourself in breach of your rtw obligations.

You have now had about 48 weeks of payments:
Your employer has an obligation to offer you suitable duties for a period of 52 weeks only.

if you require retraining it is best to start looking into this now so that courses can be identified and booked.

At 130 weeks of paid incapacity your wages payments will cease unless you are assessed as having "no current work capacity indefinately" so refer to the retraining comments above.

If you need any assistance with the process feel free to pm me.

good luck

Tony Robbo

I think the common theme in this is obvious, I was injured badly when I was a Vol Fireman and retrained. The CFA did a fantastic job, Best Surgeons, private hospitals, full wages and eventuallly finacial compensation. This involved 2 major back ops including spinal fusion. and several years off work.

I had one of Melbourne best Shrinks to help me through severe PTSD, unlimited Gym membership, and all the support anyone could ever need.

My girl friend working in disability & health care injured her back at work and is under work care, totally different senario, NO HELP, Been through several case managers. She was the OH&S rep at the time and reported bad work practices to Work Cover and no action was ever undertaken.

She did her own retraining as what was offered was totally not good the work cover assesment and thier recomendations were a joke. In the end they agreed to pay the costs ( After a long drawn out fight) She now works as a trainer and assessor and Is now earning more per hour than I do.

We are still living this nightmare but so far are coming out on top and surviving fairly well. Leigh is taking legal action and has a better than good chance of winning due to unsafe work practices.

Be very careful with anti Depressants and try to get more than one opinion from the medical side of things. In my case the ops gave me back my life although I still have to be careful. The pysio's just caused more damage as they were trying to fix a mechanical breakdown by polishing the paint!

I mentioned this post to my partner and she agreed that if you want to disscuss this further give us a PM or feel free to phone us, at the least we might be able to sort out some of the red tape and crap that workcover put you through.

The vocassional assessor will come and chat, when this occurs, make sure you know what you are capable of doing as far as your injuries go and do some research into courses available for re-training. Your GP should give you some advice on your capabilities. You tell them, don't let them tell you.

Andrew & Leigh 03 9743 9917

I damaged my left rotator cuff in an engine room of a ship. Had to be flown off by chopper, not the best way fo your first ride, but it took 2 morphine injections before my breathing returned to somewhere near normal. After a session in hospital in Townsville, Rockhampton then Brisbane, things started to improve. Yes you do feel sorry for yourself but then I saw a bloke in a wheelchair, and I thought thank heavens that was not me. That was my motivation to get and keep going again. Having 3 cars that always needed something needing doing to them kept me going and also helped to keep the shoulder moving, luckily they were all autos. Before the last operation it was scar tissue that was stopping my movement. Once that was fixed I did not look back. Yes I did go back to sea, after being off work for 12 months. I had to prove to myself that I could do this. The compo side of this job is very restrictive, which was one of the reasons to give the job away. I am now retired and loving it.

Now I am not going to suggest permanent work for you--others can do that, but If you lived in the area where we live--and I do know that you do not-- I would suggest that you do voluntary work and join the RFS [equivalent of the CFA in Victoria I think] and if you lived in our area join the Northern Rivers Operational Support brigade.

In our NR Operational Support Brigade you can do radio communications during fires, from a control center. Communications can be done by people in a wheel chair, as long as they can get up the stairs to the operations radio room.

During big fires communications rooms can be very busy with radios going all the time and handing the written messages--that the Communications Assistant on the radio wrote down, passing these on to the Communication Operator, who may have to do T-cards [in NSW, not sure Vic uses same System]--T-cards record what Fire-trucks are where, and what crew is where. Plotting GPS details on wall map etc. the Communications Operator them after looking at what actions are required pass these on to higher-up supervisors.

Some brigades from our area went to fight fires in another area hundreds of kilometers away. This other area, had only one radio operator, a woman, for the whole area, who went home exhausted after doing a 19 hour shift, leaving all the radios unmanned. In Contrast our Northern Rivers area has about 20 members in our communications team, and we would welcome more communication team members. At that fire, after this woman went home, we had communications people out on Fire-Trucks Fighting Fires--some members do dual roles, and these were called to get off the trucks on the fire ground--leaving the trucks a bit short of one crew-person, in order to take over the Communications, and set it up properly--it was very disorganised, at that fire control center. So there could be very important volunteer opportunities in volunteer Bush-fire brigade volunteer communications some where near to you.

I recently did a one day communications workshop, which include a person who is probably this lone woman who did this 19 hour shift--I did not ask if it was her but she was from that town, being one of a dozen people from adjoining areas, on top of 11 people from our area.

During that Communications workshop we were played a DVD audio clip from the 1990 Pearl-Beach fire to show what a communication room can be like. Up to 7 radios were going all at once--Helicopters, Firetrucks, Police, ambulance, etc. Then, shouting above other communications a very excited garbled voice came over the radio, repeatedly, excited but very garbled in what he was saying, and absolutely impossible to understand--I could not make out what he was trying to say. And neither could the radio operator who calmly told the excited voice to calm down and repeat his message slowly. Then I heard and understood the excited man's call, something like-- "Emergency Emergency Emergency, a fire truck has run of main road hill and rolled down the embankment near the bottom of the ." Certainly in writing this out it does not show the pressure that those doing communications are under, in such situations. Doing Bush-Fire Brigade communications is very important worthwhile volunteer work, but you can be under great pressure if you do this essential job.

Or in our area communications is sometimes done in the field from our radio trailer--towed off-road to the top of a mountain by our Dual Cab L.R. TD5Defender. There are only 3 radio trailers in the whole of NSW plus at least one Communications Bus around Sydney, so we are privileged to be one of a very few areas that has there own radio Communications Trailer. And it has a 5 kva generator, a shelter tent, five radios doing different functions and radio channels. plus it has two built in repeaters if these are needed, and a big mast aerial around 7-8 meters high when fully raised with guy ropes for those repeaters--repeaters are not always used, hence the mast is not always used.

In our Norther Rivers Operational Support Brigade, a Communications person could also act as a driver or scribe to a Group Officer, that is sit beside him in the Group Vehicle--a crap 4WD Toyota Hilux or a Nissan usually. The scribe takes and sends radio messages under the direction of the Group officer, who could command up to 40 fire trucks. [Our Group Vehicle could be on 5 different radio channels at once, using five different microphones], while taking weather readings, using a small portable weather station, also taking GPS positions, and taking compass bearings--map reading and/or map plotting of Fire fronts on a laptop, etc., all being done at once by just two people.

For example you may see new smoke coming up across the valley, and so you would take your GPS location reading, the compass bearing of where the smoke is and radio into Firecom and then on behalf of the Group Captain send a message something like, "Firecom this is group north, code blue." blue being the call code to report an incident in NSW. Then when Firecom tells you to go a head, you would say something like "reporting spot fire, our location Grid 123-567, smoke on ridge about 4 km away on compass bearing 270 degrees, request that you to dispatch a crew to check it out, stand by for a Sitrep on our current fire."
At big fires being a scribe can be very busy full on work, along with the Group Officer being flat out, say mapping the location of this spot fire on his laptop map which is to be sent to Firecom via his mobile Internet link.
As a scribe/driver in the Group vehicle you may drive over jarring rough tracks, so you should be physically up to that as far as constantly jarring your back, etc.

The NR Operational Support also has has a catering section who go out with one of our catering trailers [the big one usually towed by a Dual Cab LR Defender] in order to feed ravenous firefighters at a safe spot near the fire, plus feeding them on training days when there is no fires. or natural disasters, etc. The RFS brigades sometimes help SES during natural disasters.

There is also Logistics, moving people and equipment around--for example logistics transported some of our area firefighters to Ballina airport to fly them down to the Victorian fires. Logistics could drive trucks down, meet the crew at the airport and then fly home after handing over the truck to a fresh crew getting off the plane

NR Operational Support may also set up an Airbase--supporting aircraft on airfields or helicopter landing areas.

Training is needed to do some of these things, so you may like to consider what of these things are needed in your local area and join your local Brigade--they may not have all of this, but there may be some of this needing volunteer personnel. This is voluntary work but can be outdoors if you are up to it.

Just a suggestion to keep yourself busy.

Oh! and do note that NSW has 4 foot 8 1/2 inch gauge railways, while Victoria wanting to be different has 5 foot 3 inch gauge railways. That means that Victoria probably does things completely different to what we NSW Rural Fire Brigades do. Code Blue in Victoria may mean something completely different, such as I am going home to get my fishing rod to go fishing.

Update ,Well It's 2 years on now. Diagnosed as a chronic pain sufferer. Was in Hospital again 3 weeks ago. Had another nerve devation operation. The independent Work cover medical specialist I've seen suggest prognosis is not good for me and in their opinion doubt I will be gainfully employed again. I have now started litigation .