Supported employment for persons with disabilities

Abstract

The purpose of this project was to locate a potential funding source and write a grant to fund a supported employment program for adults with severe mental illness who reside in Orange County. The proposed program entails hiring trained consumer mentors to work with consumer mentees and provide support at their places of employment when necessary. The literature review indicates that supported employment programs are the best empirically-based interventions for helping individuals with severe mental illness to return to work.

The program will enlist and match 20 mentors to work with 40 mentees regarding various aspects of employment. Also, the program will implement educational seminars for 300 consumers and will offer various classes to potential consumers wanting to return to work, such as how to deal with their mental illness on the job, how to plan their earned income, and how to compute how much they can work while retaining their benefits.