Queensland Alliance for Mental Health

15/10/2026

How can we better support peer workers to enter the workforce, stay in their roles and grow?

Join QAMH for Episode 4 of Workforce Webinar Wednesdays to explore two projects supporting Queensland’s Lived/Living Experience workforce:

Peer Work Placement Project: Building clearer pathways into peer work.

Lived/Living Experience Supervision Project: Developing a supervision framework and training package to support peer workers in their roles.

Wednesday 21 October 2026
10.00am online via Teams

Register now: https://events.humanitix.com/qamh-workforce-series-episode-4

14/10/2026

Help shape the future of Maranoa’s community mental health workforce.

Strong communities need local solutions. Queensland Alliance for Mental Health is bringing together local organisations, community members and workforce stakeholders to help shape the Grow Your Own Non-Clinical Community Mental Health Workforce Plan for Maranoa.

Join us in Roma to:
• Identify local workforce gaps
• Build on what’s already working
• Set priorities for sustainable pathways into non-clinical mental health roles, including peer support workers, community connectors, coordinators and administrators.

This isn’t a consultation. It’s a working session.

What’s discussed and agreed in the room will directly shape the Plan.

The Plan is being developed with, not for, the Maranoa community, with a focus on First Nations peoples, multicultural communities, people with lived and living experience, and local community members.

If you work in, live with, fund or care about community mental health in Maranoa and surrounding regions, we want to hear your perspective.

--> Wednesday 28 October 2026
--> Roma Explorers Inn, Roma
--> Morning tea and a networking lunch provided. Check the registration page for confirmed timings.

Register here: https://events.humanitix.com/maranoa-grow-your-own-non-clinical-community-mental-health-workforce-plan

Questions? Contact Michelle Wattridge at [email protected].

09/10/2026

Queensland Alliance for Mental Health has responded to the Australian Government’s consultation on the future NDIS access process.

We support the aim of making access fairer, more consistent, evidence-based and accessible. But how the new process is designed and implemented will be critical for people with psychosocial disability.

Psychosocial disability can be episodic and fluctuating. A person’s functioning or presentation at a single point in time may not reflect the extent or permanence of their disability. Consistency should not require uniformity.

Our submission calls for an access process that embeds psychosocial disability expertise and Lived and Living Experience, reduces unnecessary barriers to navigating the process and providing evidence, protects autonomy and self-determination, and provides supported pathways to other services.

With significant unmet need for psychosocial support already existing outside the NDIS, access reform must also be matched by investment in Foundational Supports and community-based psychosocial supports.

Access reform cannot simply shift unmet need from one part of the system to another. Read the submission: https://www.qamh.org.au/response-to-the-ndis-access-changes-consultation/

02/10/2026

24/09/2026

How Australia classifies mental health workers affects how governments recognise, count and plan the workforce.

Queensland Alliance for Mental Health has responded to the OSCA 2027 consultation draft reflecting our April 2026 submission recommendations, including a higher Mental Health Worker skill level, recognition of Community Mental Health Worker as an alternative title, and stronger recognition of lived experience peer work.

But further changes are needed so the classification properly reflects Queensland’s community mental health workforce.

Our latest submission calls for:
· task descriptions better reflecting recovery-oriented, community-based psychosocial support
· distinct occupation codes for Lived Experience Mental Health Peer Worker and Mental Health Team Leader
· changing the proposed First Nations specialisation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social and Emotional Wellbeing Worker, with the classification developed in genuine partnership with First Nations communities and organisations.

Getting these classifications right matters. It helps governments and the sector properly recognise, count and plan the workforces delivering essential community mental health and wellbeing supports.

Read our submission: https://www.qamh.org.au/response-to-the-occupation-standard-classification-for-australia-osca-2027-consultation-draft/

21/09/2026

Queensland Alliance for Mental Health and QCOSS are teaming up to unpack VET and what it means for our workforce.

How does the VET system work? What role do RTOs play? And where are the opportunities for stronger partnerships across the sector?

Join Jamie Brown from QCOSS for Episode 1 of Workforce Webinar Wednesdays for a practical introduction to the VET system and its role in workforce development.

Wednesday 23 September 2026 from 10.00am to 11.30am, Online.

QAMH Workforce Series E1: Understanding the VET System
For people working across workforce development, training, mental health and community services.

Register now: https://events.humanitix.com/qamh-workforce-series-episode-1

18/09/2026

What an inspiring day filming at Karakan recently.

This brilliant organisation has turned our Workplace Wellbeing Leadership in Community Mental Health micro-credential into face-to-face training for its leaders, and the engagement and feedback said it all.

There’s something powerful about peer-to-peer learning. It brings the content to life and helps leaders turn new ideas into everyday practice. Exactly the impact we hoped for.

A huge thank you and congratulations to Zoe Bagheri for your outstanding L&D work and all the effort you’ve put into bringing the micro-credential into practice. And thank you to Zoe, Hayley Abell and Tracy Cox for the opportunity to capture this work and share it with the wider sector.

Zoe’s key message? If you’re thinking about doing something similar, go for it. With some help from AI, the micro-credential can be adapted into face-to-face training, creating space for the peer learning and shared experience that can make all the difference.

16/09/2026

Thank you to Mental Illness Fellowship Australia (MIFA) for the invitation to last weeks' Parliamentary Friends of Mental Health event at Australian Parliament House-Canberra,act.

Getting MPs and Senators from across the political spectrum into one room to listen to people with lived experience, carers, kin, service providers and researchers doesn't happen often. That's the whole point of this group, and it's why we value being in the room.

It was good to hear from Emma McBride MP, Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Su***de Prevention, alongside MIFA's James Maskey and Rob Ramjan AM. The panel covered a lot of ground, with Georgie Harman AO (Beyond Blue), Commissioner Selwyn Button (National Wages and Productivity Commission), Rachel Fishlock (Gayaa Dhuwi), Renai Buchanan (MIFA) and Monique Williamson (MIFWA).

Thanks to convenors Tracey Roberts - Federal Member for Pearce, Andrew Wallace - LNP Federal Member for Fisher, and Senator Jordon Steele-John for keeping mental health on the parliamentary agenda.

03/09/2026

We're proud to welcome the Queensland LGBTQIA+ Alliance to Queensland Alliance for Mental Health. The Alliance brings together LGBTQIA+ organisations from across the state. Big and small, regional and urban, grassroots and specialist. They've come together to lead reform, not just to be heard.

Their work is grounded in First Nations leadership, peer wisdom, and lived experience. They put community expertise at the centre of policy, research and advocacy, and they invest in regional, rural and remote communities so LGBTQIA+ Queenslanders everywhere can access safe, affirming, culturally secure support. Learn more: https://www.qldlgbtqia.org.au/

03/09/2026

The Inclusive Communities Fund must recognise psychosocial disability.

Queensland Alliance for Mental Health supports the Fund’s aim of making community organisations more welcoming and accessible for people with disability.

But making a community activity more inclusive is not the same as providing the flexible, relational support some people need to participate and stay connected.

Our submission calls for psychosocial disability to be explicitly recognised, meaningful involvement of people with Lived and Living Experience, practical organisational change and locally designed approaches.

For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, approaches must be led by those communities and community-controlled organisations.

The Fund should complement, not replace, individual NDIS supports, Foundational Supports or community-based psychosocial services.

Read our submission on our website: https://www.qamh.org.au/inclusive-communities-fund-consultation/