Quality mental health support relies on a highly skilled workforce with specialised qualifications. The Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Sector is facing rising demand for services and significant workforce recruitment challenges. Attracting talented and qualified staff is made more difficult by stigma, discrimination, and a lack of adequate recognition. This consultation explored new and emerging job roles for our sector including Community Connectors and Digital Mental Health Support Specialists, ways to support entry pathways into the sector and what can be done to support mobility of workers across support sectors. In this submission we recommended the following to enhance the sectors reputation and appeal as a career path;
- Establishing traineeships as a training pathway for the core qualifications;
- Improving availability and access to high quality and relevant professional development opportunities including micro-credentialing programs;
- Enhancing leadership qualifications and development opportunities;
- Supporting the entry level workforce, particularly Lived Experience (peer) workers and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community mental health workers to obtain minimum and desirable skills;
- Providing scholarships to obtain qualifications;
- Providing Peer Mentoring Programs to support development of the Lived Experience Workforce;
- Enhancing employment conditions to position the sector as an attractive career choice;
- Widely promoting the sector as an attractive career choice;
- Increasing accessibility of vocational qualifications;
- Enhancing organisational diversity;
- Maximising local resources and expertise;
- Developing clearly defined career progression pathways;
- Embedding a culture of worker wellbeing broadly throughout the sector; and
- Having clear and transferable records of skills and qualifications that moves with individuals throughout their career and portable employment benefits.
