Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health

This report examines the impact of support services on the decisions prisoners made and their attitudes and expectations immediately prior to and following their release. It covers employment, housing, substance misuse, finances and the service providers' views.

The Department for Work and Pensions has launched a public information film to tackle mental health discrimination in the workplace. The film will air across national television over the coming months.

These are the findings of a new pilot which placed employment advisers in GP surgeries. They acted as a link between patients and a range of services and support offered by Jobcentre Plus and other organisations.

The pilot has been largely successful with positive feedback from GPs, the advisers and the patients who consulted them in the surgery.

Acas, the employment advisory body, has outlined advice on how to spot and deal with mental health problems at work.

It has also launched a new booklet on Health, work and wellbeing (HWWB) - Is work good for your health?. The guide sets out the difference between a healthy workplace and one that makes you feel ill and stressed. It includes a checklist to help you assess how well you are doing against the key indicators.

The London Development Centre-led Mental Health and Employment Partnership has appointed its first London Mental Health and Employment Co-ordinator.

Shaun Crowe has spent his first few weeks putting together a draft London Mental Health & Employment Strategy and an outline implementation plan. it focuses on four main priorities:

• to provide a voice that champions Mental Health and Employment across London;
• to work with employers of all sectors and sizes to reduce sickness absenteeism;
• to work towards improving retention levels of employees with both a recent and long-standing history of mental illness;
• to increase the number of meaningful employment and other social inclusion activities for people with a range of mental illnesses.

Dame Carol Black's review of the health of Britain's working age population Working for a healthier tomorrow recognises that for most people work is good both for their long-term health and for their family’s well-being. Its proposals focus on keeping people healthy at work, and also on helping them return to work if they get ill.

Key recommendations include:

• New Fit for Work service to be piloted for patients in early stages of sickness – if rolled out the aim would be to make work-related health support available to all
• If successful Fit for Work should be extended to those on incapacity and other out of work benefits. Government should also expand provision of Pathways to Work to cover all on incapacity benefit
• Outdated paper-based sick note should be replaced with an electronic ‘fit note’, stating what people can do, not what they can’t
• Occupational health should be brought into the mainstream of healthcare provision

The National Audit Office has published a report on whether offender learning programmes are delivering efficiently and are giving offenders the skills needed to help them find employment.

According to the report some of the fundamentals are still not in place – matters like identifying which courses most help offenders to get a job, identifying which offenders need which skills, and helping more of them to finish a course they start.

The Government has announced the final phase of the Pathways to Work programme to help people off incapacity benefits and into work. The organisations awarded these contracts will deliver Pathways in the remaining 16 Jobcentre Plus districts from April 2008, completing the national rollout across Great Britain.

Pathways to Work provides support from highly skilled personal advisers from the public, private and voluntary sectors who will ensure that the long-term unemployed receive the specialist help they need to get back to work, including extra one to one work-focused interviews, groundbreaking rehabilitation support, a Return to Work Credit of £40 a week, and in-work assistance.

A new training programme designed to help nurses get their patients ready for work following an injury, disability or period of ill-health, has been launched by the Department for Work and Pensions and the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).

The training will cover the relationship between work and health, focusing on rehabilitation and workplace adjustments. It will be on the RCN website and available to nurses across all nursing specialties.

Shift's Line Managers' Resource is a practical guide for managing and supporting people with experience of mental health problems in the workplace. Their website gives extra information and links.

A new survey of 1500 GPs has found that two-thirds (64%) are unaware of the evidence that work is beneficial for physical and mental health. However, nearly 90% said that if they knew of this evidence it would affect the advice they give to their patients.

Evidence published last year conclusively found that being in work can help people with a health condition to get better; and returning to work from unemployment improves health. Work can be intrinsic to health and wellbeing, boosting self-esteem and quality of life.

Read our response to this initiative.

Following Gordon Brown's take over as Prime Minister and cabinet shuffle, there are new Ministers at the Department for Work and Pensions.

• The Rt Hon Peter Hain MP - Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
• Minister of State - Mike O'Brien MP
• Minister of State and Minister for Yorkshire and the Humber - Caroline Flint MP
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State - Anne McGuire MP
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State - James Plaskitt MP
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State - Lord McKenzie of Luton
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State - Barbara Follett MP

Ministers' responsibilities have yet to be announced.

Action on Stigma is a Department of Health initiative that aims to build on the good work already undertaken by many organisations to improve mental health in the workplace. This report sets out the findings from the listening exercise and how these will help inform the future work of the Action on Stigma programme.