Projects

The Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Sector is a crucial part of the mental health service system in Queensland, however there is a lack of contemporary information regarding its workforce.

The Community Mental Health Workforce Project aimed to address the information gap  by capturing key workforce data. QAMH consulted with almost 200 frontline workers, service managers and HR managers.

The project provided a better understanding of the workforce profile, providing details such as  70 per cent are female, 60 per cent are aged over 40 years and 63 per cent have permanent employment.

Other key findings  and sector challenges included:

• Lack of relevant training opportunities to adequately train the workforce
• Problems with finding supervised student placement opportunities
• Short contract lengths leading to a casualised workforce and high staff turnover
• Inadequate funding impacting the ability to offer fair and competitive remuneration
• Problems with the NDIS’ fee-for-service model, impacting the ability to offer secure and satisfactorily remunerated employment
• A shortage of qualified and experienced candidates applying for jobs, with challenges in recruiting and retaining qualified staff with relevant experience
• Increase in work related stress and burnout