Drink and Drugs News DDN October 2019 | Page 12

Back to work Just Getting a job can be one of the key drivers of recovery, but not everyone is ready at the same time. Hélène Begg explains how the IPS model has helped Cranstoun’s Brighton-based Pavilions service to rethink its approach to employment support T he 2017 drug strategy clearly stated that services should aim to support clients with their employment needs. As we are all painfully aware, however, financial constraints leave us wondering how we can stretch our budgets and our teams to tackle this national issue. As a result of a budget reduction early on in our Brighton and Hove five-year contract, Cranstoun had to decide whether we could keep a full-time employment, training and education (ETE) coordinator in post. We needed to work hard on retaining a skilled, experienced and happy workforce capable of managing complex caseloads, and reducing the number of recovery workers was definitely not an option. So here we were in 2017 reducing the full-time ETE post to a part-time role, even though we work with 2,500 people in treatment over the course of a year. It is fair to say that we knew it would be difficult to achieve our ETE service aims in those circumstances. I can only assume that most services in the country have had to make similar decisions over the past few years. Thankfully, in 2016, Dame Carol Black’s report An independent review into the impact on employment outcomes of drug or alcohol addiction, and obesity was released with some important findings for our sector. Among other suggestions, she recommended that the 12 | drinkanddrugsnews | October 2019 www.drinkanddrugsnews.com