Most people never stop to think about how jobs are officially named and counted. For the community mental health workforce, it matters a great deal. How a job is classified shapes the data governments collect, how the workforce is planned for, what training is funded and what career pathways look like.
We are very pleased to share that peer work now appears in the draft of Australia’s next national occupation classification, the result of advocacy Community Mental Health Australia (CMHA) led this year alongside our member organisation, the Queensland Alliance for Mental Health (QAMH).
The Occupation Standard Classification for Australia (OSCA) is the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) official list of occupations, and the next update is due in 2027. Until now, many people in community managed mental health have been described using classifications built for other kinds of work, such as disability support roles framed largely around physical or intellectual disability. Peer workers, who bring their own lived experience to their work as a deliberate professional skill, were barely visible at all.
In April 2026, CMHA and QAMH asked the ABS to change that. We called for lived experience to be recognised within relevant roles, for the Mental Health Worker classification to include Skill Level 3, for disability support classifications to name psychosocial disability explicitly, and for a new Mental Health Support Worker classification.
Our submission was successful.
The OSCA 2027 consultation draft now updates the Mental Health Worker classification to include descriptions of peer work, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social and Emotional Wellbeing work.
“Peer workers have been doing this work for a long time without the system having a proper name for it. Seeing peer work written into the national occupation standard is a genuine milestone, and one we are proud to have helped bring about,” said CMHA CEO Kerry Hawkins.
“When the draft opened for further consultation in September, we made a second submission. We welcomed the changes and encouraged the ABS to work towards a distinct Peer Worker classification in future, recognising that peer work reaches well beyond mental health into alcohol and other drugs, homelessness, family and domestic violence, child protection, justice and more,” said Kerry.
“Peer work is defined by partnership. Support is provided with people, not to them or for them. It deserves its own place in the classification, and we have offered to work alongside the ABS to make that happen,” Kerry added.
There is still more to do. The disability support classifications in the draft still do not fully capture the roles that support people with psychosocial disability, so we have suggested practical wording changes that recognise trauma informed, recovery focused support.
“This is one small step, but it is an important one. Our workforce deserves to be seen for the skilled, specialised work it does, and we will keep working until the classification reflects that in full,” concluded Kerry.
We thank QAMH for their partnership, and the peer workers and sector colleagues who shared their insights to shape our submissions. We look forward to the OSCA 2027 publication release.
