U.K. charity the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health says that prisoners with mental-health problems are not being given the help they need to find work when they are released. The charity's policy paper - Securing Employment for Offenders with Mental-Health Problems - states that too many prison-based work-preparation schemes exclude mentally-ill people because they are not thought to be ready for work, even though having a job is the single biggest factor in cutting the reoffending rate. The charity said that prison schemes placed too much emphasis on learning skills and not enough on cultivating links with employers. It called for a wider adoption of policies based on individual placement and support - involving helping people to secure paid jobs and providing in-work support to both employer and employee as long as they need it.
You can download a copy of the Sainsbury Centre report at
http://www.scmh.org.uk/pdfs/securing_employment_for_offenders.pdf
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Maybe the Sainsbury Centre could spend some of the millions it wastes addressing ' stigma and discrimination' from the public on ensuring that basic support services are there for all people with MH issues .
As things stand SCMH and the MH charity sector in general have an appalling record of employing mentally disordered offenders so its hardly suprising that most mainstream employers are wary about employing them as well.
These lofty MH charities need to be audited for effectiveness, SCMH has already had its long term funding pulled by David Sainsbury for backing another unrealistic and politically correct MH employment scheme that went horrifically wrong because the charity's 'world class' economic advisor failed to see the recession coming.
Bullying the public into doing things they wont do is really going to work isnt it.
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