Provision of Mental Health Employment Service – for NEL Clinical Commissioning Group (NEL CCG) for Waltham Forest -PRJ 991

WEL CCGs (will merge into North East London to form the single entity NHS North East London CCG (“NEL CCG”) on 1st April 2021). As the contracting Authority, the CCG wish to commission Mental Health Employment service to provide an individual placement and support (IPS) Employment Service to access and offer support to unemployed mental health service users with the aim of supporting them in work, education, or training within Waltham Forest.

The service will be based predominately within the local Community Recovery Teams to provide (IPS) employment support to Service Users with Mental Health Conditions that are unemployed to move into paid work, training, education, or voluntary work.

Aims and Objectives.

It is widely accepted that good employment is generally positive for a person’s mental health, including those who have a mental health condition. Work supports and promotes social and economic inclusion and enables a person to be more independent and therefore have more control over their life, all of which have been identified as protective factors of mental wellbeing. For this reason, it is widely acknowledged among professionals that the longer people are absent from or out of work, the more likely they are to experience depression and/or anxiety. Therefore, the aim of this Mental Health employment service is to support people to gain appropriate employment.

The objectives of the service are to:

• Support people with mental health problems who want to work by providing education and training to develop job seeking skills and employability while supporting their job search and placement.
• Develop skills and capability within employers, employment services, other settings such as voluntary organisations, colleges, and mental health services to better understand mental health and employment issues so they can more effectively support people with mental health problems.
• Develop partnership working between public, private, and voluntary sector organisations to work together to support people with mental health problems, building whole system capacity.
• Lead by example as an employer of people with lived experience of mental health problems.

The service will offer an open, flexible, and responsive range of opportunities to people who have mental health problems. A wide range of approaches and interventions will be offered by the successful organisation.

The employment service will deliver person-centred support to adults with mental health problems to gain paid employment. It is however, recognised that not all people with mental health problems will be successful in achieving this and in such cases the aim of the service will be to facilitate engagement with other vocational opportunities, such as training, education, and volunteering. Therefore, the overall aim is to increase the confidence, self-esteem, personal resilience, and life outcomes for people with mental health problems.