Work Counts invites expressions of interest for new Asia-Pacific IPS Learning Community

Work Counts is proposing the formation of an Asia-Pacific IPS Learning Community as a special opportunity to connect, learn and collaborate with other countries that provide IPS employment support.

• The Asia Pacific region varies in area depending on the context, but it often includes countries in East and Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand and Pacific Island states.
• A learning community is a group of people who share a common interest. They interact with each other to exchange ideas and information and provide mutual support.

Background

New Zealand is a member of the International IPS Learning Community. This IPS Learning Community has evolved over the last twenty years. Currently, the community includes 23 US states and seven countries outside of the US: Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, New Zealand, England, Montreal, Canada and France.

The community includes IPS trainers, researchers, mental health and employment support leaders, family leaders and employers who all work together to better the way employment support services operate to improve people’s lives. Amongst other things, members of the community share ideas for how to fund IPS programmes, how to use fidelity and employment outcomes to guide technical assistance and how to expand IPS services across their regions.

Folk from Australia, New Zealand and Japan have attended the annual conference in the USA over the years and the success of this IPS Learning Community has been an inspiration to people in the field, modelling effective IPS implementation strategies and the power of peer learning.

The European IPS Learning Community was formed in 2018 and aims to provide a voice and focus for quality scaling of IPS employment support across the European continent.

We think it’s time for a similar network in our part of the world!

We have had discussions between organisations in Australia and New Zealand and there are already a number of interested people.

If you are leading IPS employment support in your organisation, please take a moment to complete a short online form with your expression of interest (EOI) around the new Asia-Pacific IPS Learning Community, or other thoughts. We look forward to your response by Monday 28 August 2023.

Update: The EOI survey has now closed.

Join the Asia-Pacific IPS Learning Community here.