Sector Specific
The Beyond Blue‘s Good Practice Framework equips first responder organisations with information about how to address barriers to mental health and wellbeing by offering guidance on the core actions that work. The framework encourages a strategic and integrated approach that focus on prevention interventions and how to develop or check an existing strategy to promote the mental health and wellbeing of a first responder workforce.
The Mental Health Commission of New South Wales and Black Dog Institute give guidance in developing strategic objectives for emergency management organisations in the report Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy for First Responder Organisations In NSW.
Supporting Mental Health in First Responders: Recommended Practices (version 2, October 2019) is toolkit of actions developed by a steering committee consisting of representatives from fire, police, and paramedic services, working with WorkSafeBC. To address the psychological health needs of first responders BC First Responders Mental Health has also produced a roadmap for policies and programs to support the mental health of first responders of their employees. It will help you get started and know the direction to take.
General
Consult Australia’s Striving for Mentally Healthy Workplaces Workplaces gives contextual information, recommendations, and case studies of initiatives at member firms that involve creating strategies, designing polices, and implementing actions to support mental health in the workplace.Evidence and Theory Support the Good Work Design Principles? An Educational Resource
Professor Sharon Parker has written an educational report Does the Evidence and Theory Support the Good Work Design Principles? Funded by SafeWork Australia it sets out the evidence-base and theoretical underpinning of work design, focusing particularly on psychosocial aspects of jobs.
SuperFriend‘s Building-Thriving-Workplaces gives information and support to create positive change in your workplace by addressing wellbeing in five domains: leadership, connectedness, policy, capability, and culture.
Allianz’s report Awareness into Action gives a “holistic approach to cultivating mentally healthy workplaces in Australia”. It provides background information on the rise, costs and why questions around the trend to poor mental health. It also gives information on how to create a thriving workplace by building emotional resilience, improving job design and achieving work-life balance, building a culture of collaboration, and also gives recommendations.
A guide to promote and implement the VPS framework ‘Leading the Way’ has been developed to improve mental health in the Victorian Public Sector. It is not intended as a ‘step-by-step’ help, rather it helps workplaces understand issues to do with workplace safety/OHS and provides tools and templates that can be tailored or amalgamated with existing resources and OHS systems to meet the specific requirements, needs, and risk profile of individual departments and agencies.
In this Beyond Blue webinar Developing a Mental Health Strategy for your Workplace Rachel Komen, Workplace Project Manager for ‘Be You’ outlines the steps involved in developing a workplace mental health strategy. This includes the critical success factors which assist in the development of a successful strategy and how the Heads Up website can be used to help.
HeadsUp, an initiative of Beyond Blue and the Mentally Healthy Workplace Alliance, have created web-based resources for developing strategies and actions for a mentally healthy workplace.
The Mental Health Commission of Canada offers a series of webinars on Workplace Wellness highlighting techniques for integrating psychological health and safety at work, with topics ranging from building a business case to evaluating your workplace.
Mark Leopold from the Workplace Engagement team speaks in this Beyond Blue webinar Developing a Plan and Taking Action on Workplace Mental Health. He uses the integrated model to assist you in identifying, prioritising and implementing actions in the workplace that promote the positives of work and wellbeing; protect the mental health of all staff, and support staff with mental health conditions.
Examples of Strategy and Action Frameworks
Sector Specific
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) Structural Review, Reform and Policy Development on Mental Health Review looks at how the AFP are tracking in light of their draft Mental Health Framework and their Strategic Action Plan 2016-22. This report outlines Phoenix’s recommendations. Thanks to the Australian Federal Police for opening themselves up and sharing their Strategic Action Plan and external review of their approach to managing mental health issues with the public.
With input from Beyond Blue and Ambulance Victoria, Ambulance Victoria 2016-2019: Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy is part of their comprehensive response to the recommendations of the Ambulance Performance and Policy Consultative Committee Action Plan.
General
Leading the Way (LTW) Framework is the Victorian Public Sector‘s (VPS) strategy to improve mental health and safety in the public sector. The charter has many downloadable sections including: the full strategy, a poster of the strategy overview, a poster of the mental health and well being charter, and group of indicators to measure mental health and wellbeing performance.
Prevention First is a framework developed by EveryMind (with funding from the NSW Dept. of Health) for strategic action to prevent mental ill-health and promote mental health and wellbeing. It is written in plain language for a broad audience including governments, policy makers, and workplaces. It builds on existing models and policies developed here in Australia and overseas to define key concepts, develop a new conceptual framework, and set and agenda for prevention and promotion activity.
The Australian Department of Health National Mental Health Strategy was endorsed in 1992 and aims to promote mental health and prevent, or reduce impact of, mental illness and injury of the Australian community. See here for the National Mental health Policy; National Mental Health Plan and Mental Health Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.
The World Health Organisation’s WHO Mental Health Action Plan takes a preventative based and life-course approach to achieve mental health for all people. The Plan has four key objectives: more effective leadership and governance for mental health; the provision of comprehensive, integrated mental health and social care services in community-based settings; implementation of strategies for promotion and prevention; and strengthened information systems, evidence and research.
