22 Jul
Department Of Education
Melbourne
About the Department
The department provides a wide range of learning and development support and services.
The department provides policy leadership, plans for the future of education in Victoria and leads key cross-sector collaboration. The department plays an important system steward role by providing support, guidance, oversight and assurance across early childhood and school education systems, as well as directly providing school education and 50 new early learning centres.
About the Division
The Employee Safety, Wellbeing and Inclusion Division (ESWID) is committed to the Department's vision to create healthy and safe working and learning environments for Department employees to thrive and succeed.
ESWID performs its functions through five Branches that span prevention, response and recovery, as well as strategy, advice and support. These teams adopt a holistic approach for supporting the health, safety and wellbeing of our workforce across schools, central and regional offices. This includes Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) and Workers' Compensation policy advice and support, for both physical and psychosocial wellbeing. The objectives of the Division are to:
- promote positive wellbeing in learning and working environments
- prevent against known and expected risks to health, safety and wellbeing
- respond swiftly and effectively to manage potential issues as they emerge and prevent injuries
- support employees to recover from injury and illness, and return to work
About the Role
The Manager - Employee Wellbeing Response Team (EWRT) will lead a team of advisors in the provision and coordination of early response mental health and wellbeing supports for department staff in significant distress and at risk of injury - primarily through the Employee Wellbeing Support Services (EWSS).
This includes referral, coordination and/or delivery of four key programs under the EWSS:
- Crisis counselling (emergency counselling) is available 24 hours a day, 7 days per week by phone.
- Rapid Contact Callswhich are also a rapid form of support and can be actioned within an hour of being requested in most cases.
- Planned Workplace support for provision of on site counselling to school staff at school sites.
- Employee Wellbeing Support Serviceswhere staff members can also access and make appointments for counselling with less urgency.
The EWRT also provides specialist support in response to serious employee injury and complex safety incidents. The Response Team support is sometimes required out of hours, including on public holidays and weekends. To ensure continuity of service,
The Response Tam has established a standby roster. A VPS5 or VPS6 team member will be rostered on standby on weekends and public holidays to respond to emergencies or critical incidents involving DE staff, students or property.
A member of the Employee Wellbeing Response Team (Response Team) attends Incident Management Team (IMT) stand up meetings in response to critical incidents that impact on schools and corporate workplaces. The IMT is usually coordinated by the Executive Director or Director, Security and Emergency Management (SEMD) or their delegate.
The Manager will empower and enable the team to provide high quality, empathic and responsive advice about the mental health supports available under the department's EWSS and other programs, and provide coordination and support to schools to deploy those services to staff in need.
The Manager will guide the team in providing best fit wellbeing support and services to schools with complex cases and critical incidents, and guidance to schools and department workplaces facing ongoing wellbeing challenges as to how best to manage early-onset health and wellbeing risk indicators to prevent them from escalating.
The Manager will also be responsible for overseeing the EWRT eduSafe Plus triage function and management of the on-call roster in accordance with relevant policy and legislation as outline above. This role will also be required to be on-call from time to time. An allowance will be paid for on call periods in accordance with the VPS Agreement.
**In addition, the Manager will**:
- be responsible for contract management of the Department's Early Intervention program,
and will support the team to track budget and utilisation for that program, which aims to support staff with escalated mental health support needs
- ensure their team works closely with other parts of the Response and Recovery Branch, the Division and regions, including the Employee Mental Health Reform Branch, including provide streamlined service to schools, and to support the implementation of the any emerging OHS psychosocial safety requirements.
The Manager will have strong communication and people management skills supported by expertise in mental health, education or other related areas.
Due to the responsive nature of this role, some state-wide travel will be required for this role, advance notice will be prov
Impress this employer describing Your skills and abilities, fill out the form below and leave Your personal touch in the presentation letter.