Creating Flourishing Environments

For many years Forth Sector has been supporting people with mental health problems to recover and to move on into mainstream employment wherever possible.

Twenty years ago the value of meaningful work as a way to help recovery was accepted anecdotally but not proven.  In recent years, the work of people like Professor Bob Drake at Dartmouth in the US, Bob Grove and his team at the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health and the Scottish Development Centre for Mental Health have effectively validated Forth Sector’s pioneering approach.  The work of these people and agencies has enabled us to understand better the employability processes we use and to develop a model of effective practice. 

Creating flourishing environments may sound merely an aspiration; there is however a body of evidence in relation to recovery from mental illness, bringing disadvantaged people into employment and sustaining the psychological health of employees which shows that challenging but professionally run businesses which offer supportive working environments create the conditions in which people can flourish.  Flourishing means being well and doing well, both of which are measureable. 

The model we have created is able to help people typically excluded from mainstream employment. People with mental health problems figure large in this group, but many others face similar barriers.  For this reason, Forth Sector will in future aim to help a wider range of people facing exclusion and not just those with mental health problems

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