Employment outcomes
This area within Te Pou’s Information programme is a work in progress and will be added to over time. The intention is to provide evidence-based material that will be useful for the sector, since employment is a crucial area in terms of recovery. Te Pou worked with Workwise to develop this information. Please contact Te Pou if you would like to add any links or employment stories.
Introduction
Often when we meet people, they ask what we do. Our response is usually employment-related. Employment plays a critical role in everybody’s life. Paid employment matters. Job and career aspirations are a normal part of life. Once you become unwell however, these aspirations are often forgotten. Your ability to improve your own quality of life through meaningful employment is not recognised. The NZ Mental Health Commission (2001:1) said that paid employment is a ‘critical component of the pathway to recovery.’ How often is this path not travelled? The honest answer is often we do not know.
Employment is a critical step in the road to recovery and maintaining wellbeing. Unfortunately employment for people who experience mental illness is often seen as a challenge or unrealistic by those providing support. People with mental illness continue to have some of the lowest employment rates, even compared to other disadvantaged groups.
It is critical to ask questions around employment in any setting and especially within clinical environments. It is also important to measure outcomes in relation to people getting work. By measuring employment it will matter. The challenge is determining what the best way to define and measure employment is. We hope that this section begins this conversation.
Employment Outcome measures
In this section we feature key employment outcome measurement tools.
This is a working list which will be added to it over time. Initially two outcome measures are featured.
Supported Employment Fidelity Scale (SEFS)
SEFS is a simple scale for determining how well a service supports service users in employment. Completed by the employment worker or clinician it produces total scores which indicate how well a service is supporting employment options for service users. It consists of 15 questions in three categories using a simple 5 point scale. The three categories are: staffing issues (3 questions), Organisational questions (3 questions) and Services (9 questions).
View the Supported Employment Fidelity Scale
Socially-valued Role Classification Scale (SCRS)
SCRS is a self administered scale which is sensitive to vocational functioning and functioning in alternative socially valued roles. Both current role type (5 ranked categories) and level of independent functioning to 15 levels can be assessed.
View the Socially-valued Role Classification Scale, and the SCRS user guide.
Organisational links
The following links demonstrate what some organisations are doing in terms of employment activity and outcomes. This is not an exhaustive list and we encourage organisations to contact Te Pou to consider being added below.
The Association of Supported Employment in New Zealand ASENZ
Walsh Trust — EmploymentWorks
Pou Whakaaro Whakatane — Connecting People and Communities
Affinity Trust — Job Quest
Connect Supporting Recovery — Employment Support
Turning Point Trust — Employment
Research Links
Waghorn, G., Chant, D., & King R. (2007)
Classifying Socially-Valued Role Functioning Among Community Residents with Psychiatric Disorders.
American Journal of Psychiatric Rehabilitation, 10, 185–221.
Employment Stories
Page last updated: 8 December 2009