The Employment Empowerment Service is a mental health and wellbeing support service targeted towards unemployed individuals facing complex and intractable barriers to work. The service offers personalized, goal-based support in a holistic and joined-up way. Service users are given a minimum of 6 x 1 hour sessions of 1-to-1 support which they can access either in their home or if preferred, in a mutually agreed community-based setting. The purpose of these sessions is to enable the service user to develop their own unique wellness recovery action plan (WRAP). The WRAP will contain a combination of both short-term and long-term goals that will firstly, assist to eliminate any current barriers to employment and secondly, help to improve overall wellbeing. The support worker will introduce tools such as the ‘Five Ways to Wellbeing’ and the ‘SMARTER Goal Framework’ that will enable the service user to develop a firm plan in which they will become comfortable with self-monitoring and managing. Once all 6 sessions of face-to-face support have been delivered, service-users will then be given a minimum of 2 x 30-minute weekly telephone review sessions with their support workers.

How do I access the service?

At present, individuals can only access this service through speaking to their work coach at the Job Centre Plus.