Campaign to double mental health workforce

MINISTER for Mental Health Gabrielle Williams visited Bendigo Health last Thursday to announce the launch of a program that will double the number of mental health and alcohol-and-other-drug workers by 2031.

The Jobs That Matter campaign involves $7.4 million to encourage health workers to move to Victoria and includes funding for more than 300 postgraduate scholarships for mental health nursing, AOD, and allied health workers.

The Government will fund 84 12-month traineeships for AOD workers in the next two years, which are also available to people with no previous experience in the sector.

“This is a domestic recruitment campaign, designed to attract to Victoria workers from around the country and attract them to work In Victoria’s public mental health system,” said Ms Williams.

“This is of course on the back of the royal commission into Victoria’s mental health and wellbeing system, which told us in no uncertain terms that we needed to rebuild our mental health system from the ground up and on the back of that royal commission report.

“We’ve so far invested over six billion dollars into overhauling our system, rebuilding it from the ground up, all the way from prevention to response, and ensuring that we better meet the needs of the community that so firmly depend on these services.

“These are obviously really important programs that will ensure that we have the pipeline of workforce in our AOD sector that we need, understanding that there are often co-occurring issues between our mental health system and our AOD system as well.

“We need to make sure that we are providing the skill set we need to best serve and meet the needs of a community of people that rely on these services.”

Goulburn Valley Health was one of original pilot organisations in regional Victoria for the traineeships and has just taken on their third trainee.

“One of the fascinating things about the pipeline for AOD workers is that every time we’re looking for workers, we usually need someone with some experience because of the complexities involved in managing people with AOD,” said Goulburn Valley Health program manager Cheryl Sobczyk.

“The traineeships give the trainees an opportunity to be working with a mentor.

“At the end of their traineeship they’re actually work-ready and capable, if that’s their interest area, to either go onto further study or start working in the sector.

“It’s a really important pipeline, because especially in regional Victoria, it’s really, really difficult to recruit AOD workers with some experience.”

Successful applicants could be eligible for grants of up to $20,000 for relocation, settlement, and integration costs.