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). IPS has been shown to be more effective the more closely it follows these eight principles:

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. Employment specialists develop relationships with employers based upon a person's work preferences
7. It provides time unlimited, individualised support for the person and their employer
8. Benefits counselling is included.

The source of these principles is the Dartmouth IPS Supported Employment Center website

A Fidelity Review is a way of checking the extent to which a service is follows these principles.

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. For further information on the Centres and contact details, visit the Partner Centres section.

Turning evidence into outcomes in Sussex

an accelerated county-wide IPS implementation programme

Implementation of the IPS approach in the UK is patchy and few places have achieved high fidelity to the model. Practitioners in the USA have been implementing IPS programmes since 2001. State Trainers there are proven to increase paid work outcomes for clients with severe and enduring mental illness. The success of these posts in the US has lead to the creation of a similar post in Sussex.

The Sussex post is the first of its kind in the UK and will provide an opportunity to test an approach to accelerating the implementation of IPS across Sussex. The post aims to build sustainable, high performing (high fidelity) supported employment services across Sussex and increase the numbers of people found competitive jobs from 125 to 200.

This post is being run in partnership by Centre for Mental Health, Southdown Supported Employment and Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.

For more information, contact Becky Priest, Regional Training & Development Manager for IPS in Sussex, on 020 7827 8309 or email becky.priest@centreformentalhealth.org.uk.

Download IPS in Sussex information sheet (138 KB)

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.