A short history of individual placement and support in Norway.

Abstract

Objective: Norway is a high-income and high-cost society with a generous welfare system, and has the largest mental health-related unemployment gap of the OECD countries. The aim of the current paper was to present a short history of Individual Placement and Support (IPS) services to increase work participation in Norway. Method: We provide a narrative overview of the developments and research on IPS in Norway, from the introduction of supported employment to recent and ongoing randomized controlled trials (RCTs) investigating the effectiveness of IPS for various target groups. Findings: While vocational rehabilitation services in Norway have traditionally followed a train-then-place approach, the introduction of supported employment in the early 90's led to a range of new initiatives to increase work participation. Early implementations were inspired by supported employment, but did not follow the evidence-based IPS methodology. More recent developments include a shift toward evidence-based IPS, and the first Norwegian RCT of IPS showed effectiveness on both work-and health-related outcomes among people with moderate to severe mental illness. Several ongoing trials are currently investigating IPS for new target groups including chronic pain patients and refugees. Conclusions and Implications for Practice: The results suggest that IPS is more effective than traditional approaches to increase work participation, even in the Norwegian context of a high-cost welfare society. IPS has shown effectiveness in severe as well as more common types of mental illness in Norway, and results from ongoing trials will further reveal whether IPS may be expanded to various new target groups.

Relationship between satisfaction with mental health services, personal recovery and quality of life among service users with psychosis: a cross-sectional study

“…In Norway, recent central political guidelines from the Ministry of Health and Care Services (Helse- og omsorgsdepartementet), have placed emphasis on developing more patient-centred care [ 19 ], consistent with requests from user organizations [ 20 ]. In the Norwegian national guidelines on assessment and treatment of persons with psychoses (2013), a recovery approach is emphasized as a general principle for good practice [ 21 ], and recent years have seen an increase in implementation of development recovery-oriented practices in Norway such as Illness Management and Recovery (IMR) [ 22 ] ACT/FACT –teams [ 23 ] and Individual Placement and Support (IPS) [ 24 ]. A previous study showed that a great majority of Norwegian service users with psychosis reported that support for personal recovery were important for them (article in press).…”

Attitudes toward and Utilization of Evidence-based Practice among Norwegian Social Workers

“…The social workers' lack of knowledge and general confusion with the terminology raises the question how the implementation of EBP should best be carried out in the social sector. While EBP and ESTs such as Multisystem Treatment and Parent Management Training and Individual Placement and Support are being put into practice in the Norwegian social sector (Angel, 2003;Patras & Klest, 2016;Sveinsdottir et al, 2019), it is evident that the facilitated knowledge transfer between academia and the practice field is not reaching the practitioners. Further research should be done to bridge the gap in knowledge transfer between academia and practitioners in order to facilitate a better framework for understanding and utilizing EBP in practice.…”

“…In child welfare services, empirically supported treatments (ESTs) such as Multisystem Treatment and Parent Management Training are being put into practice (Angel, 2003;Patras & Klest, 2016). In social services, Individual Placement and Support are gaining popularity as a method to increase work integration in Norway (Sveinsdottir et al, 2019).…”

Implementing individual placement and support (IPS): the experiences of employment specialists in the early implementation phase of IPS in Northern Norway. The IPSNOR study

“…Implementation of IPS requires policy accommodations to the health and labour services at a local, as well as governmental level [ 19 ]. Our study took place in a Norwegian context where national policy mandates widespread implementation of IPS [ 33 , 34 ] and IPS has systematically been studied in Norwegian trials since 2012 [ 35 ]. Norway is a high-income society, characterised by a generous welfare system and a low general unemployment rate [ 36 ].…”

“…Health and social services are rooted in two different sectors, regulated through different legislation and funded separately. The Norwegian mental health services provide community- based and specialised, hospital care [ 35 ]. For health services, local provision is influenced by governmental authorities through legislation, but local authorities are free to organise and arrange services to meet local conditions [ 38 ].…”