Employment as Part of the Recovery Continuum
| Date | 01 June 1998 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/13619322199700014 |
| Pages | 16-21 |
| Published date | 01 June 1998 |
| Author | Tony Roddis |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care |
16 The Mental Health Review 2:2 ©Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) 1997
Tony Roddis, Director
PSYCHIATRIC SUPPORT & AFTERCARE WORKSHOP
‘All work is empty save when thereis love’
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet.1
W
ith funding opportunities, not least from
Europe, being targeted specifically at
‘employment and training’, there has been
adramatic increase in projects with these worthy goals
in mind, catering for adults with a severeand enduring
mental illness.
Undoubtedly, a great deal of the motivation for
employment and training has come from the users
of psychiatric services themselves. A benchmark for
‘health’ can easily be seen to lie with meaningful
employment. This notion is often reinforced by com-
fortably ‘employed’ professionals, family expectations
and the user’s own impatience to return to ‘normality’.
Unfortunately,the reality is moreoften that work is
hard to find — particularly with a record of mental ill-
ness. The benefits system militates against any graded
re-entry to the workforce and the gulf between mental
distress/disturbance and full employment is too great to
be negotiated in one stride.
Limited resources for day care provision linked to
the above understandably invites a disproportionate
provision of employment projects at the expense of
services that enable the individual to follow a graded
path of recoverythat ultimately may lead to employ-
ment. It also has to be recognised that there are many
who do not wish to seek employment, who are there-
fore by definition excluded from these schemes.
Citizenship can equally be achieved by roles such as
volunteer,artist, parent, community activist and so on.
It is the enabling of people to achieve sufficient
personal re-integration to make choices about their
futurethat should be the foundation of day care
provision.
It must also be recognised that it is simplistic in the
extreme to assume that replication of the employment
model is the only appropriate route to rehabilitation for
people in distress.
The twofold pressure brought about by scarce
resources and the desire to recover quickly invites
both professionals and users to establish projects that
can disguise a Pandora’s box for individuals and
organisations.
The United Kingdom system of community-based
care remains underfunded and largely disjointed. Path-
ways for recoveryand reintegration for chronic mental
health sufferers in the community context are often
impossible to locate. Deliveryof service is frequently
provided through the ‘group work’ format offered at
CMHT
s, PDUs or CMHCs with no progressive ‘move
on’. Although ‘self esteem’ groups and ‘recognising
your own symptoms’ groups undoubtedly have a place
in the process of recovery,they cannot provide the
sufferer with the essential sense of belonging, or a place
of identity in the community.The ‘revolving door’is a
shortstep away for those with nothing constructive,
creative, or empowering to do in the community setting.
Employment as Part of
the Recovery Continuum
CASE STUDY
T
his case study examines the role of employment and training schemes for adults with a severe and enduring
mental illness from the perspective of Psychiatric Support & Aftercare Workshops (PSAW), a registered
charity providing services in the south-east of England for that client group. Employment and training schemes
have the potential to damage clients unless they are part of integrated and progressive community-based services.
ABSTRACT
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