Table 3.

Employment Support Specialists’ feedback and suggestions to improve employment opportunities for people with mental health conditions

Categories	Sample suggestions and quotes
Increase the pool of employers	Reaching out to big organisations or the government for jobs. “Outreach for employers... I don’t know, [National Centre] personnel who can build relationship with organisations. Big organisations… They govern a lot of things.”—ESS01/F
	National Centre to lead employment support for people with MHCs “[National Centre] could also start to employ not so much on employment specialist, but I’m just saying that, our clients to do some simple jobs.”—ESS03/M
	Develop a pool of employers who are truly willing to employ people with MHCs “Pool of employers who are understanding and willing to go the extra mile to support person with mental health challenges. I think we need to really (have) you know, (such) a pool.”—ESS06/M
	Provide more financial incentive for employers to hire “Tap on the government’s schemes where a company can employ these people as interns, and then the government pay(s). It’s a policy for everybody who has no job.”—ESS14/M
Employment support for people with MHCs	Need for a safe working environment for people with MHCs “Work is therapeutic, yes. But it has to be supervised and it has to be a safe environment.”—ESS10/M
	Provide free of charge employment support services “[Voluntary Welfare Organisations] normally initially (used to) say charge $10, I said no it’s not going to work. So when we stopped charge [referring to charging fees], and it’s [ESS service] free…more (would) come.”—ESS13/M
	Improve socialization process at the workplace “I think if the socialization process can be improved for them, they will be much more (at ease at work). Their recovery journey will be much better.”—ESS14/M
	Provide supported employment “Supported employment may also be very helpful for the lower functioning clients, they provide support. So then they [ESS] go down to the employer and then uh, they look at how their client is doing and to provide support for the clients.”—ESS19/F
Engagement of formal and informal community service providers	Refer clients to community partners “Whether or not can we refer some of the easier cases to the community partners? Because a lot of our clients need the [employment support] service but they are not willing to associate with job club because they don’t want to be linked to [National Centre], they don’t want the stigma to be with them.”–ESS02/F
	Integrated support “We have to think about rehab as a department and program in [National Centre] and to see how we can link the inpatient, the outpatient clinic and the community all together and how do we interact with each other.”—ESS11/M
	Develop community support “We always think (that) the government’s got to be the one (to help), but there are a lot of people out there (who are) able to provide the means to (employment). Maybe just set up an institution or company where they can actually allow real training, you know like from the cleaner to the admin to the, you know to anything. It could be just like a bookshop or it could be a small little café, you know people who are willing to fund and put this people where we can actually really train (them).”—ESS18/F
Training	More training for people with MHC to understand the current job market “These are somethings.. (such as) could be a formal training, but yet can be also (be used) for some experience”—ESS08/F
	More training for ESS to improve skills “It’ll be good to go for further training for ourselves as well for some of the things (that) we may (have) forgotten or we just need that fresh breath of uh whatever new training, techniques that people have used and have been helpful to them to, to actually share (these) with us.”—ESS16/F
Societal level initiatives	Address stigma of mental illnesses “For a start, I think there’s a lot of work that needs to be done in the community itself. Yeah, I think employers need to be educated about this mental illness. It’s not as bad as what they may think ..(it) is violent,. So, if there’s some sharing (with the employers) we should be able to get more help.”—ESS03/M
	Advocacy “My observation with autism, somehow it moved very fast but because they got a champion… Can we find a champion? I mean since that has worked, seems that with [Celebrity’s name]… Is there someone or is there a model that works for mental illness or disability?”—ESS17/F
	Address the issue around disclosure at the time of employment “If the ministry can really dispense off the need for people to declare”—ESS18/F

MHCs Mental health conditions, ESS employment support specialists, F female participant, M male participant