Enable celebrates Mental Health Awareness Week with additional funding
This week is Mental Health Awareness Week (14-20 May 2018) and Shropshire has been awarded extra funds to help people with serious mental health problems across the county into paid work.
Enable
Shropshire Council, through Enable, its supported employment service, will work with partners at South Staffordshire and Shropshire Foundation NHS Trust and in the voluntary sector to increase the number of people with mental ill health into employment. Enable supported almost 300 vulnerable people into paid employment last year and its Mental Health Employment Service consistently exceeds its targets. It will now help to expand the service to support even more people in Shropshire who have serious mental health problems.
Shropshire’s Service Transformation Plan (STP) made the bid to NHS England in conjunction with partners Shropshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and Shropshire Council. Enable have announced that as a result of the bid they have been awarded additional funding for their Mental Health Employment Service. The funding will pay for additional staff with the aim of doubling the number of people with serious mental ill health who are helped into employment.
Jonathan Allan, Enable’s disability services manager, said:
“This is a great opportunity to expand the service and help more people across Shropshire into paid employment. This investment reflects the Government’s view that work can help to improve people’s mental and physical health, and Enable’s great success in supporting people to get jobs and to keep them. ”
Enable’s Mental Health Employment Service is a Centre for Excellence Partner with the Centre for Mental Health in Individual Placement and Support (IPS), which is internationally recognised as the best-evidenced approach to supporting people with mental health problems into work. This involves each local mental health service having an Enable employment officer attached to it that carries out intensive, individual support, rapid job searches and finally a placement in paid employment, as well as time-unlimited in-work support for both the employee and the employer.
Enable prides themselves on getting the right job for the right person and believes that one size does not fit all. In order to gain sustainable employment for someone it needs to be a career path that suits each individual’s needs and aspirations.
Click here to read some of Enable’s success stories: http://www.enableservices.co.uk/category/success-stories/
Further information
Enable is a specialist organisation that supports people with disabilities into work. Their main focus is to assist individuals with disabilities and mental health needs to find a job that suits them. Enable delivers positive, individualised support into recruitment, as well as a comprehensive package of ongoing advice, guidance and support to both the jobseeker and the employer.
Shropshire is nationally one of 17 mental health Centers of Excellence of Individual Placement Support (IPS) in mental health employment. IPS is a proven method of getting people into competitive employment first with training and support on the job. Enable is the regional lead on IPS and is extensively involved in developing and supporting IPS across the West Midlands.
NHS England’s strategy for increasing the employment opportunities of people with serious mental health problems can be found in “The Five Year Forward View of Mental Health” (2017).
