Authors: Catherine Skate, Martin Wren
Year: 2015
Event: 2015 TheMHS Conference
Subject: Progressing Employment
Type of resource: Conference Presentations and Papers
Abstract: Highly integrated partnerships between mental health and disability employment services provide strategies to overcome barriers to participation in the open labour market for people with serious, persistent mental illness.
The Individual Placement and Support (IPS) Model of Supported Employment is a best evidence model where highly integrated partnerships between mental health and disability employment services works, consistently showing employment outcomes of 60% worldwide.
From March 2012, dedicated NSW Mental Health Vocational Staff expanded IPS partnerships from 7 to 26 across the state, and established the NSW IPS Reference Group to support implementation and governance of the model.
Establishing and governing these partnerships requires a particular complex set of skills and procedures to ensure maximum fidelity to the model, and therefore the best outcomes for consumers. Where responsibility and resources for these functions are assigned to a dedicated position or service outcomes have been shown to double.
Since July 2014, no responsibility or resourcing for these functions has been reallocated from NSW Health, putting existing high performing partnerships at severe risk.
This paper proposes a solution to this service gap with the establishment of an independent Centre of Excellence for the Individual Placement and Support Model.
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