Fair Start Scotland - individual placement and support review: Scottish Government response

Recommendation 1

In future, IPS for people with severe and enduring mental illness should be commissioned outside of FSS through a partnership between health and employability commissioners.

Progress has been made in moving towards a more aligned approach with local partners, enabling us to effectively align services within our wider COVID-19 economic response. This has helped to ensure that our employability services are responsive to the changing labour market situation and provides the flexibility to allow us to meet the anticipated increase in demand for support from the impacts of the pandemic. We will build on this when designing the future model of employability support and strengthening our No One Left Behind approach.

Our Mental Health Transition and Recovery Plan, published in October 2020, outlines the Scottish Government's response to the mental health impacts of COVID-19. Included in this are a number of key employment commitments, ensuring that our mental health response focuses on the central importance of meaningful employment and seeks to mitigate the negative impacts on mental health of unemployment.

In taking forward these employment commitments, we are working to strengthen links between Employability and Mental Health policy, with a particular focus on improving support for those with mental health issues to secure and sustain employment. We are also working with a wide range of stakeholders, including employer groups, trade unions and mental health organisations, to promote mentally healthy workplaces. As part of this work, we recently launched a digital platform, in partnership with Public Health Scotland, that signposts Scottish employers to a wide range of resources to enable them to support the mental health and wellbeing needs of their workforce. The digital platform can be found at: www.healthyworkinglives.scot/mentalhealth

The development of our new Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy, due to be published in the coming year, will build on the direction set out in our Mental Health Transition and Recovery Plan and will guide the work that the Government, and our partners, will do over the coming years to improve mental health and wellbeing in Scotland.

As we develop and design the future model of employability support, officials from across Government and key public sector partners - notably from Employability, Mental Health, Fair Work, Public Health Scotland and Local Authorities - will work collaboratively on agreeing the best approach to delivering this recommendation.