ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews social support that has been relatively neglected in the disability management literature and presents findings from studies investigating the relationship between social support and post-injury return to work. The disability management approach to the prevention of injury and the delivery of effective, workplace-focused rehabilitation services aims, inter alia, to re-establish a positive, trusting worker-workplace relationship, both prior to and subsequent to, any work injury. Workplace social support has been relatively neglected by return to work (RTW) researchers who have overwhelmingly preferred to study demographic and injury-related correlates of RTW. The wide-spanning set of benefits posited to flow from social support made it particularly attractive to rehabilitation researchers seeking to explain such post-injury outcomes as quality of life, rehabilitation progress and even vocational status. The efficacy of a structured workplace social support program in facilitating successful RTW appears to generalize across countries, cultures and occupations.
