Looking for a job was the last thing on Sarah Gibson’s* mind when she ended up in temporary accommodation far away from her family, friends, and support network. But after a few months in a Government-funded trial to help households experiencing homelessness find work she has landed her first-ever job and earns enough money to rent her own permanent home.

Sarah’s route into work and out of homelessness was made possible by individual placement and support (IPS), an intervention pioneered in the United States (US), which is now being evaluated in the UK as one of several test and learn projects, co-ordinated by the Centre for Homelessness Impact.

Sarah’s IPS pathway coach, Matt Granger, says many of the people he supports don’t even consider work because their housing is so uncertain. “Part of my work is helping them think that actually paid work could be a real possibility,” he adds. “At the core of this, many people I help have low self-esteem. Some have been exposed to some quite traumatic circumstances.”

He met Sarah when she was living in shared accommodation after fleeing domestic abuse. After some months of building rapport, then trust, they explored the job market together before firing off applications, a process which led to Sarah securing  part-time work in a shop.

Matt then helped Sarah balance her new pay with her benefits, ensuring she was better off than before. As a result she was able to secure a permanent home from her local authority. “The council knew she had landed this job so could now afford the rent,” Matt says. “It was really amazing to help her work through her problems and start something new and fresh in her life.”

IPS offers tailored and flexible support for up to a year after participants find work. “It helps people just to have someone to confide in and express the difficulties they face at work,” Matt says. It was designed in the US in the 1990s for adults with severe mental illness, has been adapted for people with other needs, such as those with addictions, and has been rolled out in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, among other countries.

While there have been a few trials by the UK Government in mental health and drug and alcohol settings, this is the first IPS trial within the homelessness sector. It is being evaluated for its effectiveness to help people on their journey out of homelessness in eight local authorities: Barnsley, Rotherham, Sheffield, Barnet, Fareham, Wakefield, Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin.

The IPS model under evaluation shares four core principles which have previously been pinpointed by research. It is open to everyone; employment must be paid and not voluntary; participants must be financially better off when in work; and, the job search is “rapid” with on-going support. This latter principle turns on their heads the more conventional models of employment support which wait for training to be completed before job seeking.

Matt is employed by the social enterprise, Beam, which runs the support service for the project alongside three other organisations, IPS Grow, South Yorkshire Housing Association, and Enable (Shropshire Council).

As well as providing support to people experiencing homelessness, these providers also work with potential employers. “We go out to employers to unlock the hidden job market,” Matt says. “If someone wants to work in construction we ask construction companies if they are hiring, how they hire, and who they take on.”

Building relationships with employers allows IPS Employment Specialists to ease the transition of the people they help into the world of work. “It makes it easier to manage any disputes that arise,” Matt says. “We might also be able to disclose their situation [with the person’s consent] so employers have a more clear understanding of the person they’re employing.”

Like some of the other Test and Learn projects, IPS is being evaluated with a randomised controlled trial, a “gold standard” method more common to medicine than public policy. Caseworkers are signing up 460 participants, half of which are randomly selected to receive the IPS support. The rest form a control group and are directed towards employment support services already available locally. By comparing the “control” and the “intervention” groups the evaluators hope to work out the contribution of IPS towards helping people find work and a route out of homelessness.

Splitting the group of participants in this way is clearly a challenge for caseworkers like Matt who just want to help as many people as they can. “On a personal level, when you meet someone in need it is frustrating to find out you can’t help everyone.” But he is hopeful the evaluation will succeed and lead to even more people getting the support he finds so satisfying to provide. 

“They face a lot of challenges, being homeless, living in temporary accommodation, and just getting by is tough,” he says, “I’d love to see more of these individuals getting into work, see their lives change, get the skills that they need, and money in their pocket.”

*not her real name.

‍Keith Cooper is a freelance journalist

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