Individual Placements and Support Service

The Individual Placement and Support (IPS) service consists of three Employment Specialists who are based with Community Mental Health Teams.

The service is available to you if you are feeling job ready and are interested in moving into employment.  To be eligible for referral, you must be on the Care Programme Approach (CPA).

Our Employment Specialists are based within Community Mental Health Teams across the Manchester area to ensure that employment support is an essential part of your package of care.

To make an enquiry or referral to the service please contact the relevant Employment Specialist for your area or your Care Coordinator. 

IPS is committed to a recovery approach to mental health care and actively seeks to support those service users who want to move into employment.

The IPS service consists of three Employment Specialists who help service users to find and remain in employment. We offer help in preparing for work and engage with both the employer and employee to provide ongoing support.

The approach of vocational support we have adopted when supporting individuals with mental health issues back to work is based upon the Individual Placement and Support (IPS) model.  This supported employment model has been extensively researched and found to be effective at achieving integrated community employment for people with mental health problems.

The IPS service involves:

• Rapid job search
• Integration of supported employment and mental health treatment
• Attention to an individual's preferences
• Competitive employment as the goal (with or without support)
• Time unlimited support

IPS is an evidenced based approach to supported employment. People who participate in supported employment services are almost three times more likely to find employment than those who engage in other types of vocational programmes. We focus on finding you competitive and sustainable employment.  We do this through adopting a ‘jobs first’ approach which is incredibly successful, rather than people being in the never ending cycle of work preparation.

The Employment Specialists work across the City with any service users who are currently supported by Community Mental Health Teams, have had an inpatient admission or have been supported by the Crisis Resolution Team within the previous six months.  The Employment Specialists provide a flexible and sensitive service that fits around the individual and their strengths and needs.

Joanne, one of our service users, is just one of the people to benefit from the service so far. After discussing her wish to get back into work with her Community Psychiatric Nurse she was referred to the team's Employment Specialist who used the Mental Health Outcome Recovery star to talk through Joanne's situation and where she wanted to be in terms of finding a job. They then developed an action plan and the Employment Specialist helped Joanne to find jobs that were suited to her work history and aspirations.

Joanne decided that working part time would be the best way to ease back into work life and so through regular meetings the Employment Specialist helped her to explore job vacancies through Job Centre Plus and other employment websites. Eventually they identified one position that suited Joanne in terms of job description, location and number of hours.

The Employment Specialist arranged a meeting with the Disability Employment Adviser at the local Job Centre for support with in-work benefit calculations and completing a permitted work form with a supporting letter from the Employment Specialist.

10 weeks after engaging with the IPS service, Joanne was successful at securing a Receptionist post for 12 hours a week and stays in touch with her Employment Specialist who provides in work support.

Please note that the purpose of this service is to support service users into employment. Do not contact the service if you are a trainee health professional seeking a work placement. If you are a trainee health professional seeking a placement click here for the online contact form.