Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) legislation in Australia stipulates employers’ duty of care to provide safe physical and mental healthy work environments for all employees.

Stress is the biggest OHS threat to workplaces with many now taking up mental health literacy courses.

This presentation will provide evidence that meaningful work with appropriate support and connectedness is critical for wellness. However, one off mental health awareness, literacy “compliance, quick fixes” are NOT enough to bring cultural and behaviour change. There is no one silver bullet or panacea. MHFA, beyondblue’s workplace programme, HeadsUp linked in with The National Mental Health Commission’s Alliance “Creating Mentally Healthy workplaces,” though well intentioned have limitations.

The ultimate way to address these issues is for employers, directors and workplace decision makers to demonstrate leadership, resourcing and the development of strategic sustainable ongoing promotional and preventative campaigns. Creating safe and supportive workplaces requires ongoing multi-layered options, collaborative partnerships and resources that work towards embedding new practices, policies, attitudes to change stigmatising behaviours
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By reducing discriminatory practices people with mental health issues who are not employed and socially excluded on many levels are given an opportunity and support to contribute

In June 2012 Eastern Health received funds to support a new program for people with a mental illness to access employment and education opportunities. The “Pathways to Economic Participation” initiative funded for two consultants to run the project for 2 years. Eastern Health partnered with Mental Illness Fellowship to deliver the program to three community clinical Mental Health teams in the Outer East of Melbourne. The “Individual Placement Support (IPS)” model was chosen based on an increasing evidence base to its effectiveness. One of the two consultant positions was classified as a peer consultant and the position was successfully filled by a suitably qualified person with a lived experience of Mental Illness. This presentation examines the recovery journey of two consumers for whom participation in the employment program was the catalyst for a raft of significant changes in their lives.

Participation in meaningful occupations, including employment, is crucial for mental health recovery and well-being (Dunn, et al., 2008). However, employment rates for people living with mental illness remain poor – in significant part due to the challenges in maintaining rather than just gaining employment (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012).
The aim of this presentation is to report on a qualitative study in which we gained a rich understanding of strategies that people living with mental illness actively choose and use to maintain their employment.
Choice was a central feature of all participant stories. Participants all actively used their chosen combination of strategies in order to minimise barriers and maximise supports and enablers. Strategies that we will detail in the presentation included: identifying and connecting with helpful people; looking after all of me; choosing a job that fits with who I am; staying motivated; positive reflection and re-framing; and choosing and using strategies in the workplace.
Mental health workers and employment specialists can support long-term employment outcomes for people living with mental illness by embracing a recovery-oriented approach and empowering people to actively identify, choose and use their own strategies to maintain their employment.

Highly integrated partnerships between mental health and disability employment services provide strategies to overcome barriers to participation in the open labour market for people with serious, persistent mental illness.
The Individual Placement and Support (IPS) Model of Supported Employment is a best evidence model where highly integrated partnerships between mental health and disability employment services works, consistently showing employment outcomes of 60% worldwide (1).
From March 2012, dedicated NSW Mental Health Vocational Staff expanded IPS partnerships from 7 to 26 across the state, and established the NSW IPS Reference Group to support implementation and governance of the model.
Establishing and governing these partnerships requires a particular complex set of skills and procedures to ensure maximum fidelity to the model, and therefore the best outcomes for consumers. Where responsibility and resources for these functions are assigned to a dedicated position or service outcomes have been shown to double. (2)
Since July 2014, no responsibility or resourcing for these functions has been reallocated from NSW Health, putting existing high performing partnerships at severe risk.
This paper proposes a solution to this service gap with the establishment of an independent Centre of Excellence for the Individual Placement and Support Model.