The IPS Grow Research & Innovation team exists to support evidence-driven change, innovation, and improvement across IPS and IPS Grow. Our role is to act as an enabler of IPS practice, generating and sharing insight that strengthens service delivery, improves access and outcomes, and helps the IPS community respond to changes in delivery context.

Our vision is for research and innovation to be a golden thread running through IPS. IPS Grow already draws strongly on scientific evidence, research, and performance data to guide focus and support. Building on this, our aim is to more systematically embed lived experience, behavioural, attitudinal, and wider qualitative insight into IPS practice, enabling a richer, more human-centred understanding of service users’ and stakeholders’ experiences.

We are also actively connected to the wider IPS international community on behalf of England, creating channels for shared learning and practical collaboration across countries. Through IPS Grow’s role in the International IPS Learning Community and IPS Europe Learning Community, we bring global and European insights back into the English IPS system, helping services to adapt, innovate, and maintain high-quality IPS delivery (IPS Europe Learning Community – IPS Grow)

Our Priorities for 2026

  1. Scale IPS access and expand reach
    • IPS Youth: Support a randomised control trial to test and learn how to embed the IPS Y scale into England
    • IPS for people at risk of homelessness: Support a randomised contrail trial to test and learn how to embed IPS-25 scale to support people at risk of homelessness.
    • IPS in Forensic Mental Health: Building on our scoping work in Forensic Mental Health, we will continue working with the IPS Forensic Network to strengthen the evidence base and grow the resources available to practitioners. This includes developing clear, evidence-informed, practice-based guidance on delivering high-fidelity IPS in forensic settings, alongside early exploration of IPS delivery in criminal justice settings more broadly.
  2. Support improved access, delivery and outcomes
    • Race Equity in IPS: Equity is at the heart of IPS. Yet people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds continue to face systemic barriers in healthcare access and the labour market. Our work in this space explores how race equity is currently understood and embedded across IPS services, how IPS Grow–led initiatives are supporting this work, and where further support is needed. The focus is on turning insight into practical, actionable improvement for teams on the ground.
    • IPS and AI: Support the development, test and trial of AI tools in a safe sandbox environment in order to build understanding and guidance for wider services in using AI to enhance practice
    • IPS Access and Outcomes: Following exploratory research led by Dr Rachel Perkins and Dr Miles Rinaldi, where we identified key insights from a national data set, our focus will be on translating the findings into practical actions that support delivery and help reduce variation in outcomes across services.
  3. Drive a culture of collaboration, improvement and continuous learning
    • Knowledge Exchange: We will continue to lead knowledge exchange through our first Community of Practice focused on electronic patient records and digital transformation. This will take place in February, more details coming soon.
    • Co-production: Our focus here is to support services on their co-production journey by developing a series of practical case studies to share ideas and learning. Alongside this, we’ll be working with colleagues from Social Finance’s Human-Centred Design team to establish an IPS panel of associates.
    • Return on Investment: Explore ways to better capture and outline the impact that IPS can have on people’s lives from multiple angles beyond gaining paid work, such as wellbeing, social engagement, reduced use of health services and so on.
    • Research network: We are also planning to convene a yearly “Round Robin on UK IPS Research” as a space to share key insights from ongoing studies, discuss implications for practice, and strengthen links between commissioners, providers, and researchers.