Overview
headspace is the National Youth Mental Health Foundation providing early intervention support to young people aged 12-25, including: mental health, physical and sexual health, work and study support and alcohol and other drug services. These services are provided via a national network of centres, an online counselling service eheadspace and a support service for schools.
Situation
headspace has always had a non-traditional management structure. Since inception ten years ago headspace National Office has contract managed headspace centres around the country which are operated by local lead agencies. headspace National Office has provided a number of support services including a Learning and Development function to assist centres to deliver the headspace model of care. Because of this structure, the workforce we target has included National Office staff who are direct employees, staff in headspace centres employed by their local lead agency, private providers working at centres under the Medicare and other government health schemes, and people who offer in-kind work at centres (not paid). The lack of a top-down management structure to the frontline workforce has always impacted engagement with the frontline workforce.
But under recent national reforms this issue has become more pronounced. From July this year the lead agencies are now contracted by their local Public Healthcare Network (PHN) to deliver headspace centres. headspace National Office no longer manages the contracts with centres but still accredits, co-ordinates and supports the national network of centres to deliver the headspace model. The model defines fifteen headspace service components that must be delivered. Support includes provision of resources, tools and training to build the capability of the headspace workforce to deliver the headspace model. We anticipate that at the end of our current two-year contract with the Department of Health, the department may require us to operate on a cost recovery basis, selling access to our training and resources to the centres.
Business Issue
This change makes the challenge of providing capability building to the headspace centres even more complex. It will no longer be viable to mandate training for people based on their roles. We need adapt build self-service offering that meets the identified needs of centres and influences the work of centres in-line with the headspace model. And we need this module to deliver sufficient value to centres that they may later be willing to pay for it.
Big Questions
- How do we design a self-service training and resource platform that balances meeting the identified capability needs of centres and influencing centres in-line with the headspace model of care?
- We’re now one further step removed from the delivery of headspace services. How do we measure our success when we don’t have much visibility of behaviour change and results in centres?
- How should the possible future requirement to commercialise our learning and resource platform influence the work we are doing now to establish the platform and learning products?
Notes & Ideas
Resources
- LearningCafe Webinar-Desperate Need to Reinvent the L&D professional in Australia https://vimeo.com/125133429
- The new organization by Deloitte University Press
- The Bold New World of Talent from Bersin by Deloitte
Facilitator
Ian MacLean – Manager – National Education and Trainingatheadspace