Philleen Dickson introduces individual placement and support (IPS)

In the first of a series of short videos from Work Counts, Philleen Dickson introduces Individual Placement and Support (IPS).

IPS is a proven approach to employment support developed for people experiencing mental health and addiction issues.

IPS employment support has been so successful that it is now being trialled for other population groups who can benefit from personalised employment assistance.

Work Counts offers practical support and training to organisations that are implementing an IPS programme within their services.

If you’re interested in learning more about the research trials Philleen mentioned, here is the latest meta-analysis of IPS randomised controlled trials (open access) published in 2019 by Donald Frederick and Tyler Vanderweele from Harvard University in the United States.

The review study found that as with previous meta-analyses IPS employment support programmes significantly outperform control vocational services in terms of:

• numbers of people supported into jobs at any time, and at the end of the study
• shorter time to first competitive job
• length of time working
• higher income.

Furthermore, the study found that IPS could also improve quality of life and maybe overall functioning, although more research with larger sample sizes is needed to know for more certainty.

Browse our IPS Toolkit to view the rest of the videos.