Employment Matters is an employment service for Adults with mental health issues. We work closely to the IPS (Individual Placement and Support) principles with the aim of getting our clients back into paid work. On average we get around 23 people into paid work each year. The people we work with have multiple barriers that have prevented them getting and retaining paid work.
Employment Matters is an employment service for Adults with mental health issues. We work closely to the IPS (Individual Placement and Support) principles with the aim of getting our clients back into paid work. On average we get around 23 people into paid work each year. The people we work with have multiple barriers that have prevented them getting and retaining paid work.
In the evaluation section there is a video link, in this link you will see some of our success stories, which is an example of a few of the peoples lives the service has touched.
We work closely with Adult Community Mental Health teams(CMHT), GP surgeries and Job Centre Plus to take referrals to our service. For those in the CMHT’s we work in a multi agency way around the clients care package, feeding into reviews and sharing information. Our work with Job Centre Plus is to ensure that people meet their Job Seekers or benefit commitment and ensure that they get the necessary support and transition into paid work is a successful and sustainable one. Our work with Employers is around educating employers about mental health in the work place and how they can best support their employees. We do a lot of retention work with employers and our clients when they have secured paid work to ensure they retain work and it remains sustainable for them. We also take referrals for people who may be in work and struggling with mental health issues, this can involve us going into the workplace and working with the employer around reasonable adjustments.
We ensure that all our work is person centred and each clients journey is unique around their requirements. We involve clients and carers in planning their journey, recovery and vocational goals form the outset and review these every 12 weeks using our MFM “My Future Matters” planning tool kit. We do annual surveys to collect information and comments on the service we offer and plan our improvements from these comments. we also ask clients and stakeholders to complete a satisfaction survey at the end of their journey with us.
Our biggest challenge is getting employers to work with us, as a charity we can’t offer monetary incentives like some of the other organisations can that work in recruitment and workability fields can, so employers often work with other organisations. Where we have faced these challenges we have overcome this successfully by offering to educate the workforce on Mental Health Awareness and by offering the Employer support with the employee. In addition to this we promote the employer positively in our success.
We have a database of key contacts and successful outcomes and our weekly team meetings provide an opportunity to log and share all the best practice within the team. All key contacts are created on our IT system and notes are made for future reference. The positive practice within the team is also shared with the partners we work with.
We have been evaluated by the CCG who fund us as offering a vital service that is good value for money.
We have also been evaluated by a youth volunteering project and they created a promotional video for us as one of their projects. See link below.
We have shared our work within our own organisation to improve other employment services.
As demonstrated in the above video link we have worked with young people to share our work and provide them a learning opportunity.
We also share our work within local voluntary sector forums and networks such as the Education, skills and Inclusion forum and VOLSAG the voluntary sector advisory group.
