PRJ-1261-SEL-ICB Southwark Mental Health Supported Work Environment Service

Service Overview

The service will support Southwark residents with severe mental illness (SMI) and other long-term mental health needs by providing them help and encouragement in a supported work environment.

The Service will provide support service users to

• develop skills that are readily usable or transferable into their daily lives, and
• prepare them for open employment or vocational pursuits as appropriate.

The supported work environment will consist of social enterprises run by the provider with service users deployed directly within them to develop vocational skills. The provider will also run classroom-type sessions to develop service users’ IT and interpersonal skills relevant to a work environment.

The service will seek to

• Improve work skills and the disciplines associated with employment.
• Improve social interaction skills in order to collaborate with others and relate to people appropriately in a working environment.
• Increase confidence and independence, including moving to more independent living, and decision making.
• Increase employment potential.
• Improve mental well-being.
• Make people less reliant on mental health services
• Promote greater social inclusion

The service will provide structure and purpose to service users’ daily lives and contribute to wellbeing through enhanced self-esteem. The service will also offer opportunities for individuals to develop support networks and be a vehicle for peer support.

It will enable service users to continue to live within the community and contribute to their recovery and reduce the risk of a relapse including the need to be re-admitted to acute hospital care. The support offered by the service will include monitoring service users’ mental and physical health and general quality of life.

Applicant must meet this criterion to be taken forward in the procurement process.