Welcome
"Do not quench your inspiration or your imagination..."
Vincent van Gogh
The Workforce Programme's ultimate goal is to ensure better mental health outcomes for service users. It is working to achieve this by building both the capacity and the capability of human resources within the mental health sector.
Personnel is a vital mental health provider resource, and staff policies and practices in this area can influence the worker, the environment, the work and, therefore, the service user.
The way people who work in the mental health and addiction sector think, speak and act can have an enormous impact (positively or negatively) on the speed and fullness of recovery for someone who is experiencing mental illness.
In recent years, there has been considerable investment in training and development in the sector, yet there are still stories from service users about disrespectful and harmful mental health services.
The Workforce Programme builds on the sector's past endeavours to address such shortfalls, and is exploring some new solutions. It has a project portfolio designed to achieve progress in each of the following areas:
- Workforce Development Infrastructure - to develop the ability of DHBs to progress the capability and capacity of the workforce to satisfy future service demands.
- Training and Development - to coordinate these across education, health and employment sectors, and within the mental health sector, to align pre-service entry, orientation and ongoing development of mental health workers with service provision requirements.
- Retention and Recruitment - to develop national and regional responses to issues of retention and recruitment.
- Organisational Development - to assist mental health services to develop the organisational culture and systems necessary to sustain their workforce.
- Research and Evaluation - to ensure there is information available to the sector to inform workforce development.
The Workforce Programme is also fostering collegial relationships to make it possible to direct and share learning, skills, tools and experience, and to inform future planning.
To find out who is in the Workforce Programme team, click here.
Page last updated: 7 October 2009