In the Northern Health Mental Health Division, we pride ourselves on providing high quality mental health services to people living in the northern region of Melbourne, working in a collaborative way with consumers and carers based on recovery principles. We aim to provide strong clinical leadership to support all staff in the provision of professional treatment and care by our integrated community teams, inpatient, residential and private practice services.

The Mental Health Division at Northern Health employs over 1000 staff working in the Adults and Older Adults programs. We are committed to supporting, developing and providing career progression opportunities for our workforce. 

We strongly endorse the Northern Health Values of safe, kind and together. Our purpose is “Leading to Mental Health” which reflects these values and our responsibilities.  

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Investing in our future workforce 

A significant investment has been made in developing training programs for all professional groups:  

Allied Health  

The Allied Health Early Careers program commenced in January 2024. The program is committed to the development of the workforce by ensuring students and early careers clinicians are provide with the required learning opportunities in a supported and structured program. The program will actively promote a pathway from student placements through to ongoing employment.  

Lived Experience  

Following the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System recommendations, the lived experience workforce has continued to grow and strengthen its presence within clinical services. At Northern Health, we are working towards establishing leadership structures and career progression for lived experience workers, as well as identifying specific training and professional development needs. We are investing in upskilling our current lived experience staff to provide training internally to meet the demand of the expanding workforce and offer greater opportunities. Establishing partnerships and consolidating the lived experience voice better informs service delivery to improve outcomes for consumers, careers and families.  

Nursing

The mental health entry to practice programs formally transferred over to Northern Health in July 2023. This comprises the MH Nursing Graduate program and Post graduate programs and the first intake of RUSONs as part of the strengthening nursing workforce project.  

Medical  

The Northern Psychiatry Registrar Program, which has received accreditation with the Royal Australia and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, commenced in February 2024. The training program supports registrars to complete the college requirements to become a Psychiatrist including exams and assessments, clinical work placements, research and fellowship. 

Psychology

The Psychology education team commenced in 2024, and oversees the early career psychology registrar program and provisional clinical psychology placements. They are committed to providing a pathway for provisional psychologists and registrars to move to ongoing employment. The team is passionate about supporting psychologists across all levels of experience to have opportunities to undertake CPD that is meaningful and applicable to their work, to receive supervision that supports pathway to endorsement and clinical practice.  

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