April 2015

Forward

Welcome to the newly formatted Friends of MHFA Australia eNewsletter, aiming to deliver you easily accessible MHFA-news. We are interested in your feedback.

Mental Health First Aid Skilled Workplaces

This month, we launched the Mental Health First Aid Skilled Workplaces Initiative to recognise and reward the many workplaces across Australia that are doing a wonderful job in increasing mental health literacy by rolling out MHFA Courses for employees. More info and/or nominate a workplace here.

Recognised Mental Health First Aid Skilled Workplaces

Two workplaces have already been recognised for their outstanding commitment to increasing mental health literacy. Both received GOLD Workplace recognition!

Congratulations to Monash Residential Services for training 100% of staff!
Congratulations to Job Centre Australia for training 37% of staff!

More info on recognised MHFA Skilled Workplaces.

First Lady Michelle Obama Supports MHFA

At the Campaign to Change Direction in Washington in March 2015, Michelle Obama shared her experience of being trained in MHFA.

Watch video of Michelle Obama here
Download our Press Release

Betty Kitchener Receives Prestigious Honour

On Australia Day 2015, CEO of Mental Health First Aid Australia was named a Member of the Order of Australia (AM). Read more.

Coming Soon - NEW eLearning and Blended Courses

We have developed three new eLearning courses, with blended versions of these courses currently in development. A blended course is a combination of approximately 5-6 hours of self-paced learning online followed by 3.5 hrs face-to-face learning in a group with a MHFA instructor. We are aiming to launch these later in 2015. For each of these courses, we have developed tailored case-studies, videos and resources.

NEW Courses:
eLearning MHFA for Pharmacy
eLearning MHFA for the White Collar Workplace
eLearning MHFA for Tertiary Students

More info.

MHFA in Action

Instructors and course participants share their experiences of recent MHFA Courses across Australia. Read more at our NEW web-page.
Do you have a MHFA in Action story to tell?
Share it with us.

Lobbying for Mental Health Sector Funding

In February 2015, CEO Betty Kitchener attended Mental Health Advocacy Day at Parliament House in Canberra, organised by Mental Health Australia to lobby the Australian Government to release funding for the mental health sector. In March 2015, MHFA Australia were also a signatory of an open letter from the mental health sector to Prime Minister Tony Abbot to call for certainty of funding.

This month, it was announced that Commonwealth supported community mental health organisations will be funded for another twelve months, worth almost $300 million. Read more.

MHFA Research Updates

New MHFA Course Evaluations

Experiences of a Mental Health First Aid training program in Sweden: A descriptive qualitative study
Abstract
Delivering Mental health First Aid: An exploration of instructors’ views
Abstract

Free Youth MHFA for NSW Youth Workers

In February 2015, the NSW Ministry of Health committed $250,000 funding to train Youth Workers in Youth MHFA.
More info.

MHFA Australia Indigenous Advancement Strategy Grant

MHFA Australia has recently been notified that we will receive one year of funding from the Indigenous Advancement Strategy, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, for the Aboriginal Mental Health First Aid Program.
More info to follow when available.

QLD Govt Funding for MHFA

The Queensland Government has contributed $88,000 funding to Closing the Gap on indigenous mental health in QLD, including: $14,950 to Solas for Mental Health First Aid Training to service providers and people working with young Indigenous people in Townsville and Palm Island. Read more.

Malta Adopts MHFA Program

This March, CEO of Mental Health First Aid Australia Betty Kitchener travelled the world with the MHFA Program yet again, this time to Malta to work with a team from the Richmond Foundation to adapt the Standard MHFA Course for the Maltese context. Once Malta have their MHFA Program up and running, this will take the total of active MHFA International organisations up to 23!

Catch up on all the latest MHFA International news in the 4th Edition of the MHFA International Newsletter (April 2015).

2015 Instructor Training

Do you have experience in mental health and training? Apply to become an Instructor!
View our current Instructor Training Course calendar.