Client Problem

The Australian participation rate of people with mental illness in the workplace is extremely low, both in comparison to other countries and other disabilities. Rising to the difficult challenge of increasing the participation rate, our client conducted a series of workshops with employers to identify ways to promote the employment of people with mental illness and how to develop greater understanding of mental health problems among employers.

The Mental Health First Aid training course developed by the Mental Health Department at an accredited Australian University was identified as a possible resource for increasing workplace mental health literacy. In addition to this, it provided a mechanism to encourage greater acceptance of people with mental illness in the workforce.

The aim of the course was to give people knowledge and skills to support someone developing or experiencing a mental health problem. The course was being conducted as a 12-hour, face to-face program and was successfully run in every state and territory in Australia as well as internationally. The development of an online version of the course had the potential to dramatically increase the number of workplaces exposed to the course.

SMS Approach

SMS was engaged to deliver the following objectives for the client:

• To determine whether the client's training course could be effectively modified to be delivered through a website or an appropriate alternative 
• To determine how the training course needed to be amended for effective online delivery
• To recommend other tools or extensions of the program, appropriate to a workplace setting.

Broader, strategic objectives were to provide the community, employers and people with mental illness with the knowledge that would ultimately promote increased
workforce participation and employment rates of people with mental illness.

Recommendation

SMS proposed and completed development of a CD based learning and information program which comprised of a
combination of the following:

• The current Mental Health First Aid manual
• The format and delivery of the clients current face-toface training course
• Up to date statistical data (e.g. current prominence of depression in the workplace)
• New material created specifically for the project to enhance the applicability of the program for workplaces
   

SMS did not simply convert the clients’ current manual into an online format as this would not have adequately met the objectives of this project in respect to educating people in how to recognise, accept and deal with mental illness.

The solution was developed to meet compliance standards of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Guidelines to ensure the learning experience catered for people of all abilities.

To support and promote the CD, SMS also completed the design, development and  redevelopment of web pages of the clients existing web site. This incorporated:

• Information and access to the CD
• A facility for capturing participant personal/geographical data when requesting CDs (via third party service providers)
• A facility for capturing participant survey data when (via third party service providers).
   

Outcome

The Mental Health First Aid Kit on CD delivered a highly engaging interactive resource which was distributed nationally to a far broader audience than were previously able to access the facilitated learning program.

The CD has received widespread positive feedback and has provided a package of learning and reference resources which have contributed significantly to increased workplace mental health literacy in Australia.