Evaluating the More Intensive and Flexible Services Pilot: Important lessons for the Personal support programme and welfare reform

Several years prior to the introduction of the Personal Support Programme (PSP), the More Intensive and Flexible Services (MIFS) Pilot delivered pre-vocational services and assistance to people with multiple and severe barriers to employment. The pilot’s aims were to assist participants to achieve improvements in their quality of life, to increase their social participation and to encourage participants, when or if able, to undertake vocationally focused assistance with the long-term aim of achieving economic outcomes.

The Department of Family and Community Services (FaCS) completed an evaluation of the MIFS Pilot and this paper summarises the main findings. This paper describes the pilot and how it delivered pre-vocational assistance to people with severe disabilities. The paper also reports on the outcomes achieved by participants through the program. While there were significant weaknesses in the MIFS Pilot, the experiences are relevant in the current welfare reform environment, in which policy is concerned with flexible and individualised assistance and when there is a broader focus on the achievement of social outcomes as a first step towards economic goals.