Affiliations: South West London & St George's Mental Health
NHS Trust, London, UK
Note: [] Address for correspondence: Miles Rinaldi, Vocational Services,
Main Administration Building, Springfield University Hospital, 61 Glenburnie
Road, London SW17 7DJ, UK. Tel.: +44 20 8682 6929; Fax: +44 20 8682 6725;
E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: Vocational rehabilitation for people with severe mental health
problems is poorly developed in the UK. Although a high proportion state they
would like to work, few actually do. This paper reports a pre and post design
comparing the outcomes of two vocational services in the UK: an Individual
Placement and Support (IPS) service and a non-integrated pre-vocational service
in addition to employment outcomes, we report fidelity ratings, service costs
and findings from a survey of user experiences of mental health services two
years after implementing IPS. The study shows that high fidelity IPS was
significantly more effective in enabling people with severe mental health
problems to gain and retain open employment. After two years of full IPS
implementation a significantly greater proportion of service users reported
that they received help with vocational needs with decreased unmet vocational
need in comparison to the non-integrated pre-vocational service. In addition,
service user expectations to gain open employment appeared to increase in
comparison to the non-integrated pre-vocational service. The IPS service was
6.7 times financially more efficient in terms of delivering open employment
outcomes than the non-integrated vocational service.
