What’s changing?

From April 2024, IPS Grow will calculate employment rates based on the percentage of unemployed (or economically inactive) clients who move into work. This will affect services undertaking their 10-week Fidelity Review preparation calls from April.

The new policy will apply to Fidelity Reviews and the refreshed IPS Grow Quality Mark, where our employment rate benchmark moves to 40% from April.

We’ll calculate employment rate on the basis of out-of-work clients only. We won’t include clients who are in- work at the start of their IPS service in the employment rate calculation. In-work clients include people who are employed and seeking IPS support to find a new job, as well as clients seeking job retention support.

Why are we taking this approach?

In refreshing the IPS Grow Quality Mark, we’ve reviewed the way we calculate employment rates. Calculating employment rates on the basis of out-of-work clients who find employment has several advantages:

  1. It’s the most accurate way for a service to measure and compare its success in supporting people into work. This remains the core success metric of any IPS programme. Including clients who were employed at the start of their IPS service in the calculation has the potential to distort our understanding of success and impede learning. Outcome rates are typically far higher for employed clients than for clients who are unemployed, who may have limited work experience and/or gaps in their career history.
  2. It’s consistent with the evidence base, the IPS Fidelity Manual and with how employment rates are calculated internationally. The evidence base for IPS around the world – including here in the UK – is based on the percentage of unemployed people who move into work. We set our benchmark of 40% employment rates based on the evidence of what good IPS services around the world achieve with their unemployed clients. This rate is also built into the Fidelity Manual. Calculating employment rates based on the percentage of out-of-work clients moving into jobs aligns the UK with international practice and allows consistency in how we benchmark success.
  3. It’s the fairest approach, especially given significant variation in whether IPS services can provide job retention and how in-work outcomes are defined. All IPS services support unemployed clients. However, there is huge variance in the extent and nature of job retention support. Some IPS services are unable to take on employed clients at all or are very significantly restricted in their capacity to do so. The definitions of job retention outcomes also vary considerably. In some instances, a job retention outcome could be achieved on the first day an Employment Specialist begins work with a client, for example. While variance will remain, the fairest and most transparent way of defining employment rates is by looking at the proportion of a service’s out-of-work clients who move into employment.
  4. It targets IPS Grow’s support where it’s most needed and can have most impact. IPS Grow resource is limited. We want to support services in the way that’s most impactful and where the evidence of what works is strongest. The data we see, and the evidence we gather in Fidelity Reviews, suggests that a priority improvement area for some services is improving employer engagement and increasing the number and proportion of people they support into work. Adopting a clearer definition of outcome rates helps us to serve the IPS community better and improve the experiences of people accessing IPS services.

“For example, if fewer than 40% of the people on a specialist’s caseload are employed or if a specialist has fewer than three job starts each quarter, the IPS supervisor provides monthly field mentoring.” (Supported Employment Fidelity Review Manual, 4th Edition, p64)

Job retention support

We continue to recognize the important role that IPS services play in job retention. The new policy doesn’t disadvantage services for supporting clients who were in-work at the start of their IPS service. We’ll calculate employment rates on the percentage of unemployed clients services support into work. Clients who were employed at the start of their IPS service are exempt from the calculation.

Our approach is designed to strengthen performance management and benchmarking of IPS employment rates for unemployed clients. It doesn’t mean support for people in-work is less important or valued. Both are valued but they are measuring different things and don’t belong together in a single outcome rate.

IPS services will continue to deliver support to in-work clients. These clients will count as starts/access and we’ll continue to monitor this activity. As now, commissioners will set their expectations for job retention outcomes in contracts and through other oversight mechanisms.