Mental Skillness is an initiative of The Living Well in Northern Sydney partnership. The partnership is funded in part by NSW Health’s Mental Health Innovation Fund. The NSW Government introduced the Mental Health Innovation Fund in 2016 to improve collaboration among government agencies and non-government organisations (NGOs) in the delivery of person-centred care for people with mental illness, their families and carers in NSW.
The six partners behind the initiative are: Primary & Community Care Services (PCCS); Northern Sydney Local Health District (NSLHD); Family & Community Services (FaCS); icare (Insurance & Care for the People of NSW); University of Technology Sydney (UTS); and Sydney North Primary Health Network (SNPHN).
Local businesses, individuals with lived experience, support services and Disability Employment Services have all been consulted as part of the project’s design.
Other initiatives from the partnership include the business breakfast series on mentally healthy workplaces, Have a Go Hornsby.
Skillness was created to empower local businesses to provide safe workplaces and opportunities for inclusion and participation in the Hornsby area for young people between the ages of 16-35 living with, or at risk of, serious mental illness.
Work is a critical activity that creates social inclusion and as a result supports stability in mental health. Our research to date shows that social connection is a key predictor of wellbeing, health and longevity. (Holt-Lunstad, 2018)
Mental health is often overlooked as a barrier to workforce participation, but in fact it is a major issue for us all with 1 in 5 Australian workers affected by a mental health condition each year. (beyondblue and PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2014)
A literature review of the evidence into what constitutes a mentally healthy workplace found that a positive culture conducive to mental wellbeing and supporting people who experience mental health difficulties is critical, and that mentally healthy workplaces are found to be more productive, innovative and likely to recruit and retain the best and brightest people (Harvey et al, 2015).
In order to achieve our goals of creating safe workplaces and opportunities for inclusion and participation, we have created:
Skillness.com.au – and thanks for dropping by. Here we hope to empower and enrich you with resources on building healthy workplaces, dispelling stigmas surrounding mental health and celebrating the diversity of our community. Mental illness does not limit a person’s workplace contributions; but stigma can limit their opportunities to employment.
Have a Go, Hornsby business breakfast series – Australian research estimates that absenteeism and presenteeism (continuing to go to work but working unproductively) due to poor mental health costs Australian workplaces $8 billion annually. This equates to a non-productive workforce of 29,100 full-time staff. This free breakfast series features seven keynote speakers over three months to give business leaders an opportunity to discover the impacts mental health is having on their business and how investing in an inclusive workplace is good for both staff and business development.
We identified three core values as fundamental building blocks to the success of Skillness
For business leaders, confidence means having certainty in their ability and capacity to hire, retain and support the best staff by properly attending to their workplace needs, and have their organisation thrive as a result. For individuals, confidence means being confident in their ability to get and keep a job and be an effective employee who, through employment, can also contribute to their own self-growth, self-care and recovery.
Belief draws on confidence, but takes things to the next level. It involves having faith in what you can achieve. Belief is created, influenced and fostered by the stories that both business leaders and individuals tell themselves and others about what they can achieve and do.
A greater sense of permission is our weapon against stigma, and our primary tool in breaking down barriers to healthy and sustained employment for individuals and businesses. We acknowledge that businesses, small and large, provide the backbone to our economies and our communities, and that room is needed for learning, conversation and engagement on the topic that is both person-centred and business-centred. We drive an agenda that blurs the lines between the two in order to foster and support conversation and action that acknowledge the ties between work and mental health that are relevant to us all. With a sense of permission to have more open conversation and more inclusive action, we can provide room for greater success on all fronts: personally, professionally, economically, societally.