Customised Employment Supports (CES) to improve employment outcomes

Customised Employment Supports (CES) is an employment counseling intervention tailored for clients in SUD treatment, emphasizing small caseloads, therapeutic alliance, rapid job search, vocational fieldwork and longterm support. CES is one of the interventions/programmes aimed at improving employment outcomes evaluated in a narrative review (Magura et Marshall, 2020, 14 studies).

CES is an adaptation from the Individual Placement and Support model (IPS). The main and significant differences between IPS and CES are that CES does not incorporate job development, but rather relies on available jobs in the community, and includes an emphasis on fieldwork— accompanying clients into the community for such things as looking for local job postings and making employer contacts.

The review concluded that CES had significant effect on:

• improving employment outcomes (41% of individuals in CES obtained any paid employment vs. 26% of those in standard treatment (p < .05); 27% obtained informal employment vs. 14% of those in standard treatment (p < .05)

The other interventions reviewed are: Individual Placement and Support (IPS), Therapeutic Workplace (TW), Drug court employement intervention, Job Seekers Workshop (JSW).