Supported Employment and Pacific Clinics, Pasadena

Supported employment for people with mental disabilities can improve their quality of life both financially and emotionally. Seventy per cent of people with pchizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or chronic depression live on less than $20,000 a year and more typically on the eight or nine hundred dollars that SSI provides. Supported employment adds to their incomes, provides structure, and promotes self-esteem. Due to a new generation of medications more people are able to work and mental health professionals feel that working is good therapy. They point out, however, that no one should be made to feel that she has to work. Some people are just not able to.

People with mental disabilities are often reluctant to work for fear of losing their SSI and/or their Medicaid. Social Security is starting some new programs that will allow people to earn a regular salary without losing their benefits

Pacific Clinics provides supported employment under state CAL WORKS Supported Services. An individual receiving these services must meet requirements in activities such as work experience, community service and/or vocational and educational training. Mental health supportive services count toward the weekly hours required which are from 32 to 35 hours.

Pacific Clinics provides individual, group, and family counseling and psychiatric medication support. It also provides very traditional employment supports such as job skills development, preparation of resumes, appropriate job attire, and job placement support. All of these activities count towards the 32 to 35 hours per week requirement.

There are some weaknesses in this program. Not all people with severe mental illness can tolerate a 35-hour week but they may be able to thrive with 10 to 20 hours per week. A serious problem with Pacific Clinics is very high staff turnover. In the course of a year a person may lose his job coach, his counselor, his group therapist, and his psychiatrist. This is very unsettling to people who need some dependable structure in their lives and it makes them very wary of new staff since they believe (rightly) that the staff probably won't be around that long.