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Travel Matters, based in Redhill, Surrey, is an independent travel agency offering a wide choice of travel and holidays at competitive prices. As a fully bonded travel agency, it operates in the same way as any high street or business travel agent. But, as Helen Lockett, Sally Reynolds and Peter Cobbett report, ten yeas ago it was one of a number of employment projects run by an NHS trust to provide work experience to service users. Here they describe the long journey towards independence.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the predictive validity of two measures of fidelity to the individual placement and support (IPS) approach to supported employment.

A systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted of IPS programs. In total, 30 studies provided information characterizing 69 cohorts and 8,392 participants. Predictive validity was assessed by a precision and negative prediction analysis and by multivariate analysis of deviance.

Fidelity scores on the IPS-15 scale of 60 or less accurately predicted poor outcomes, defined as 43 percent or less of participants commencing employment, in 100 percent of cohorts. Among cohorts with IPS-15 fidelity scores of 61-75, 63 percent attained good employment outcomes defined as 44 percent or more commencing employment. A similar pattern emerged from the precision analysis of the smaller sample of IPS-25 cohorts. Multivariate analysis of deviance for studies using the IPS-15 scale examined six cohort characteristics. Following adjustment for fidelity score, only fidelity score (χ²=15.31, df=1, p<0.001) and author group (χ²=35.01, df=17, p=0.01) representing an aspect of cohort heterogeneity, remained associated with commencing employment.

This study provides evidence of moderate, yet important, predictive validity of the IPS-15 scale across diverse international and research contexts. The smaller sample of IPS-25 studies limited the analysis that could be conducted.

Program implementation leaders are encouraged to first focus on attaining good fidelity, then supplement fidelity monitoring with tracking the percentage of new clients who obtain a competitive job employment over a pre-defined period of time.

The evidence indicates that good fidelity may be necessary but not sufficient for good competitive employment outcomes.

There is an established international evidence base on supported employment for people with severe and enduring mental health problems, and now a growing evidence base on how to successfully implement this into practice. The process involves substantial organisational development and change, and therefore effective leadership is critical. This article outlines some of the challenges to implementing supported employment services and explores what recent leadership theory could contribute to this process, as the Sainsbury Centre embarks on its Centres of Excellence Programme in England and seeks to build a wider learning community from our partnerships formed through the International Initiative for Mental Health Leadership (IIMHL).

Mental health conditions are common in the working population. Every organisation should have a comprehensive strategy that not only promotes mental health and provides effective return to work support but that proactively responds to mental ill health in the workplace at an early stage. This will bring about better health for people and save costs for organisations.This article outlines the scale of the issue and draws on leadership research to explore how this could be used in the workplace to build a culture able to respond to and manage mental health effectively at work. It outlines how the Centre for Mental Health (formerly the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health) has addressed some of these issues by working with the Australian charity, beyondblue: the national depression initiative. The Centre has made beyondblue's highly successful National Workplace Programme available in the UK in order to build management competencies so that managers have the skills, knowledge and confidence to act.

What does it mean to say there's an evidence base for supported employment? One approach, known as Individual placement and support or IPS for short, has been extensively evaluated and proven to help high numbers of people with severe mental health problems into work. But there is still little evidence of this approach being put into practice here in the UK. This article recalls a visit this year to the UK by Professor Bob Drake and colleagues from Dartmouth, New Hampshire, USA where the approach was developed, and explains the principles of supported employment and what it can mean for service users, staff, families and employers.

In recent years there has been increasing interest in Product Service Systems (PSSs) as a business model for selling integrated product and service offerings. To date, there has been extensive research into the benefits of PSS to manufacturers and their customers, but there has been limited research into the effect of PSS on the upstream supply chain. This paper seeks to address this gap in the research.

The research uses case‐based research which is appropriate for exploratory research of this type. In‐depth interviews were conducted with key personnel in a focal firm and two members of its supply chain, and the results were analysed to identify emergent themes.

The research has identified differences in supplier behaviour dependent on their role in PSS delivery and their relationship with the PSS provider. In particular, it suggests that for a successful partnership it is important to align the objectives between PSS provider and suppliers.

This research provides a detailed investigation into a PSS supply chain and highlights the complexity of roles and relationships among the organizations within it. It will be of value to other PSS researchers and organizations transitioning to the delivery of PSS.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the diverse nature of tangible and intangible value dimensions that contribute to customers’ perception of value from outsourced maintenance services.

A multiple case study approach has been adopted. Repertory grid, an in-depth structured interviewing technique, has been used in order to draw out the respondents’ hidden constructs in evaluating outsourced maintenance services. Data have been collected from four customer organizations of outsourced maintenance services, and a total of 33 interviews have been undertaken.

The paper has identified a range of tangible and intangible value dimensions that are of importance in maintenance outsourcing decision making. The most important value dimensions for maintenance outsourcing were found to be specialist knowledge, accessibility (of the service provider), relational dynamic, range of products and services, delivery, pricing and locality. Although the paper has identified the most important value dimensions the paper also emphasizes the need to take into account the full range of value dimensions in order to understand the whole value pattern in an organization.

The results will be of use for maintenance service providers to help them to improve value-adding capacity of maintenance services. The results can also be applied by customers to help them assess the value they receive from outsourced maintenance services.

A different perspective on maintenance outsourcing value is provided. The value patterns in different organizations and the viewpoints of respondents in different organizational roles are described. The dynamic nature of these tangible or intangible values over time and their interrelationships has also been explored.

Beatrice Bray describes the work of the Mental Health and Employment Research Network ‐ a UK collaboration of organisations determined to address the lack of a research evidence base on which to build effective employment support initiatives for people with mental health problems.