Election Priorities
CMHA Election Platform: Building a Landmark Whole of Government Psychosocial Infrastructure.
CMHA Election Priority: Transformation through investment in foundational psychosocial workforce infrastructure.
CMHA’s election priority across multiple portfolios reflect the irreducibly social, economic and relational nature of mental health, distress, and social and emotional wellbeing. It also reflects the scale of transformation required to address the structural barriers holding back systems reform, and a redirection of resources towards building a whole-of-government, rights-based and cost-effective psychosocial supports sector.
Building a Landmark Whole of Government Psychosocial Infrastructure
To support the transition to a transformative psychosocial sector that addresses the social and economic determinants of mental health, the next Australian Government must invest in the establishment of a landmark psychosocial sector infrastructure. This includes addressing cross-cutting issues that particularly impact priority populations, including First Nations, CALD, whole of family and whole of community approaches. A Cross-Sector Psychosocial Working Group must be established to support this outcome. This must begin immediately to deliver the following infrastructure components:
1. National Cross-Sector Psychosocial Workforce Survey:
Psychosocial supports are delivered by a psychosocial workforce. There is currently no data and no strategy to support a national psychosocial workforce. To address the Psychosocial Unmet Needs gap and grow the transformative psychosocial supports sector, the next Australian Government must conduct a national cross-sector psychosocial mental health workforce survey to understand the gaps, strengths and needs for a sustainable psychosocial workforce.
This survey will build on the work already undertaken by state and territory community mental health peak bodies in NSW, Qld and the ACT. CMHA will develop a national cross-sector psychosocial workforce survey in partnership with the National Mental Health Consumer Alliance (NMHCA) and Mental Health Carers Australia (MHCA), the two national Lived Experience Peaks, together with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Lived Experience Centre and CALD communities. The work will be inclusive of the informal unpaid supports provided by family carers who are the largest (unrecognised, untrained, unremunerated) workforce in mental health.
CMHA will work with other Lived Experience bodies from the suicide prevention sector, alcohol and other drugs sector, Gayaa Dhuwi, Rural and Remote Mental Health, Emerging Minds, Disability Advocacy Network Australia, national global majority representative bodies, and other key stakeholders to develop a world-first national standardised cross-sector psychosocial workforce survey.
Investment: $350,000
2. National Cross-Sector Psychosocial Workforce Strategy
CMHA will lead the development of a transformative national cross-sector psychosocial workforce strategy. This will fill a significant gap in mental health policy as the community mental health workforce was excluded from the National Mental Health Workforce Strategy 2022-32. It will also fill a gap within the disability sector, including the NDIS – the psychosocial workforces effectively operate as shadow workforces within both the mental health and disability sectors. CMHA will lead the delivery of the Strategy, guided by the Lived Experience peak bodies, and be inclusive of priority populations and intersecting sectors such as Disability, Suicide Prevention, and Alcohol and Other Drugs. It will address integration of physical health equity issues. This work will complement existing clinical workforces.
The Strategy will build on the National Mental Health Commission’s National Lived Experience Workforce Development Guidelines and The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Lived Experience-Led Peer Workforce Guide to enable greater sector readiness for the Lived Experience workforces, including the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and CALD Lived Experience workforces, and address multiple structural barriers preventing effective integration of other sectors such as Suicide Prevention, Alcohol and Other Drug sectors, the Rural and Remote Mental Health, and the Infant and Child Mental Health sector. It will address commissioning capabilities and work with relevant governments and Allied Health bodies to ensure effective implementation readiness.
Investment: $1m over 2 years
3. National Cross-Sector Psychosocial Workforce Capability Uplift
Current government approaches to psychosocial workforce capabilities are disjointed, ad-hoc and variable in quality. CMHA will provide a rapid and standardised national-to-local quality-assured approach through state peak bodies enabling capacity building of the psychosocial workforce from a baseline competency of rights-based, trauma-responsive, relationally and structurally grounded self-agency based/reflective curriculum, tailored at a local level based on local data and designed to meet local needs. As with all CMHA work it will be co-produced with the two national Lived Experience peak bodies NMHCA and MHCA.
This work can begin whilst the National Psychosocial Workforce Strategy is underway to ensure a contemporary workforce is ready to fill the gap of the Unmet Psychosocial Support Needs cohort as well as the implementation of the NDIS reform processes already underway.
Investment: $2m over 2 years
The next Australian Government must invest $3.35m over three years to build these essential foundations of a truly place-based community psychosocial supports sector. This will support the growth required to support the Unmet Psychosocial Support Needs cohort identified through the current National Agreement, begin to ease workforce and accessibility pressures in clinical systems, optimise NDIS outcomes and sustainability pressures, and support the implementation of reforms required to meet Australia’s Human Rights obligations under the UNCRPD and OPCAT. The cost effectiveness of community psychosocial supports makes this an essential investment.
CMHA will coordinate the Cross-Sector Psychosocial Working Group to deliver these foundational infrastructure components building a landmark Whole of Government approach to psychosocial supports. CMHA will co-lead with the national Lived Experience peak bodies NMHCA and MHCA to ensure this foundational infrastructure reflects the needs, will and preferences of people with lived experience.
The CMHA federal election asks above are aligned with the urgent need for the government to rebalance investment towards psychosocial supports, most critically the Unmet Psychosocial Support Needs cohort. They are a sound and practical way to prime, future-proof and safeguard this investment.
The next Australian Government must commit to an immediate uplift in existing psychosocial supports program funding to address the unmet needs of the 230,500 people living with high level mental health challenges cohort, which is identified within the 690,000 Australians living with mental health challenges who do not have access to the support they need to move from languishing to flourishing and contributing lives.
The next Australian Government must urgently progress the design of transformative, rights-based, psychosocial models in partnership with Lived Experience and inclusive of family/kin needs. At a minimum, the existing Psychosocial Project Group working under the Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Senior Official Group structure must be expanded in this term of government in the next Agreement to include Community Mental Health Australia (CMHA) as the representative of the psychosocial services sector, the upcoming Peer Workforce Association, First Nations and Cultural and Linguistically and Diverse (CALD) representatives.
