Benchmark Outcomes in Supported Employment

Mental health program leaders need vocational benchmarks for client outcomes. Outcomes from randomized controlled trials may not generalize to routine practice settings. This paper describes quarterly employment outcomes from a national learning collaborative on supported employment for people with serious mental illnesses. Benchmarks were established using the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles. Based on these percentiles, we recommend that state and local mental health and vocational rehabilitation administrators use a minimal benchmark of 33%, a good performance benchmark of 45%, and a high-performance benchmark of 57% for expected rates of competitive employment among active clients who receive evidence-based vocational services.