New NHS Funding to Improve Employment for People with Mental Illness

New NHS Funding

NHS England have just announced new funding to improve employment support for people with mental health. They will be doubling access to Individual Placement and Support (IPS) services across the country by 2020/21. This will allow nearly 20,000 people who experience a severe mental illness (SMI) to find employment. The services will also support people to retain employment.

How Does Mental Health Impact Employment?

Employment rates are lower for people with mental health conditions than for any other group of health conditions. IPS is an evidence-based approach to providing employment support for people who struggle with severe mental health problems. It is proven to be twice as effective as other programmes. In 2016/17, IPS services in England achieved approximately 2,300 job outcomes.

How is the NHS Going to Help?

At the beginning of 2018, NHS England announced transformation funding would be available to support the national expansion of IPS services. Funding is being allocated in two waves over the next three years.

The first wave, (about £10 million of funding from 2018/19 to 2019/20), will help with the development of IPS services. The 21 areas allocated wave 1 funding have all been notified and are working at pace to expand services as per their bids. Meanwhile, the second instalment, which the NHS are aiming to launch later this year, will support increasing provision in other areas that need to developed IPS further, or have no current IPS service provision.

There are numerous tools and templates to support the growth of consistently high quality IPS services as shown in this link: www.ipsgrow.org.uk.