Psychosocial Health and Safety at Your School
Workplaces need to provide their employees with work environments that are safe and support their mental wellbeing, alongside their physical wellbeing, and this includes schools. This legislation has now been in place for a couple of years in most Australian states, and is a non-negotiable, supported by Comcare and underpinned by Workcover.
Government and Catholic schools have the infrastructure of their systems to support, and independent schools can access their state/territory’s AIS, but the buck does stop with the leaders of the school to make sure they are responding to any incidents raised, suggestions made, and psycho-social (mental health and social) hazards identified in the workplace.
A great way to think about this is a three-pronged approach developed by Prof Tony LaMontagne and colleagues, where we:
- Protect mental health (reduce risk)
- Promote mental health (develop positive aspects of work and worker)
- Address and support those with mental health issues (regardless of cause) (1).
Many organisational psychologists, myself included, find this to be a really helpful structure to frame workplace mental health initiatives, and it works beautifully in schools.
For more information on this work and to have a conversation about a plan for your school, email me and we can find a time to speak. Whether it is for a small ‘getting started’ briefing, through to a bespoke partnership, now is the time to take our responsibilities in schools seriously, proactively check our current strategies, and plan for the year ahead.
References:
(1) LaMontagne, A. D., Martin, A., Page, K. M., Reavley, N. J., Noblet, A. J., Milner, A. J., … & Smith, P. M. (2014). Workplace mental health: developing an integrated intervention approach. BMC psychiatry, 14, 1-11. https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-244X-14-131
Melinda Phillips, Director/Principal Psychologist at Compassionate Schools.
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