Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust has been named as a new Centre of Excellence in supporting people who use mental health services into employment.
The county’s mental health and learning disability service provider is one of nine centres announced by the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health implementing Individual Placement and Support (IPS).
IPS is a model of evidence-based ‘best practice’ used in the field of supported employment. IPS aims to arrange placements in paid employment for service users through the provision of intensive, individualised support, rapid job search, welfare benefits advice and unlimited support for both employee and employer.
As a participant in the national programme, Nottinghamshire Healthcare will work with partners in employment services, local authorities and other agencies to offer people who use mental health services effective support to get into paid work. The learning will then be shared with other areas across the country.
The Trust is already a member of the Mindful Employer Charter, sharing best practice as an Exemplar Employer leading by example for the wider business community.
Eric Wodke, Individual Placement and Support (IPS) Development Manager said: “We are delighted to be taking part in this innovative programme. People who experience severe and enduring mental health needs often experience difficulty accessing employment. However, the vast majority of these people want to work and with the right support they can. By embedding IPS within practice across the Trust’s Community Mental Health Teams (CMHT), we can make a real difference to people’s lives.”
Advantages of the IPS approach include:
- Providing a person centred service. People using the service are given a clear idea of what to expect
- Achieving improved outcomes for employment services within a quality standards framework that is continually monitored and improved
- Increasing the number of people using secondary mental health services who are in employment
Sainsbury Centre joint chief executive Dr Bob Grove said: “IPS turns traditional thinking on its head and we are thrilled to be working in these forward-thinking areas. What is exciting is that here we will be working with innovative local services who have led the way in applying the research on what works and are now prepared to share their experience of how to really develop evidence-based services in the UK.”
The Centres of Excellence project is based on a similar scheme developed in the US by Dartmouth Medical School.
