Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health

Individual Placement and Support (IPS)

The most well-established method of 'place then train' in mental health is Individual Placement and Support (IPS). It has seven key elements:

1. It aims to get people into competitive employment
2. It is open to all those who want to work
3. It tries to find jobs consistent with people's preferences
4. It works quickly
5. It brings employment specialists into clinical teams
6. It provides time unlimited, individualised support for the person and their employer
7. Benefits counselling is included.

The evidence base

There is now overwhelming international evidence that 'place then train' models are much more effective than traditional approaches such as vocational training and sheltered work in successfully getting people into work.

The EQOLISE project (Burns et al 2007) compared IPS with other vocational / rehabilitation services in six European countries. It concluded that:

• IPS clients were twice as likely to gain employment (55% v. 28%) and worked for significantly longer;
• the total costs for IPS were generally lower than standard services over first 6 months;
• clients who had worked for at least a month in the previous five years had better outcomes;
• individuals who gained employment had reduced hospitalisation rates.

Centres of excellence

We have selected nine sites to be new Centres of Excellence in supporting people who use mental health services into employment.

See the Centres of Excellence section for more on the work these sites will be doing.

More on IPS:
Professor Bob Drake

Professor Robert Drake is Professor of Psychiatry and of Community and Family Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School, New Hampshire, USA. He gave our lecture in March 2008 about the future of supported employment.

We have clips, the transcript and Bob's slides from the lecture here.