Overview

A $15 million fund established by WorkCover supporting and encouraging initiatives to help all injured workers remain at or return to work sooner 

Objectives of the Fund
The Fund is for commissioned or tendered projects which focus on developing and improving outcomes for all injured workers to help them remain at work or return to work sooner by:

• finding solutions to barriers to injured workers staying at or returning to work
• expanding training options for injured workers
• developing greater workforce participation options for injured workers
• improving the skills of people operating within the South Australian workers compensation scheme
• developing and implementing industry-specific solutions to achieve successful and timely outcomes for injured workers and employers
• educating people about the importance of the roles of employers and injured workers to achieve the best outcomes.

What kinds of projects are supported by the Fund?
Twelve projects have been supported by the Return to Work Fund to date. The first were approved in 2009 with an additional five projects approved and funded in 2010 which commenced in 2011. You can view the outlines of some of the projects in the links below.

Projects approved in 2009 

Projects approved in 2010 

Project learning and reports
Final reports for projects approved in 2009 are now available and can be found by clicking on the link under each project.

The recommendations and learning from the 2009 projects and the Australian Institute for Social Research’s Return to Work Fund Evaluation have been captured and are being referred to WorkCover and Employers Mutual’s operational areas for consideration and possible implementation where appropriate. Discussions will also be held with relevant service providers to ensure these recommendations are considered in their service models. All recommendations will be considered as part of future claims management contracts and will help inform policy and legislative changes.

View the project learning and reports here.

Going forward
Do you have common issues or system barriers that you regularly experience in the Scheme? If so, we would like to hear from you. This will help us to develop commissioned or tendered projects to accelerate assisting injured workers to remain at or return to work. To see what we’ve learnt so far, keep an eye on this webpage page as learnings and final reports from projects become available.  Contact the Fund by phone 8233 2235 or email us at rtwfund@workcover.com.