MindMatters Resource Kit
Index of Programs and Resources
MindMatters Posters
CommunityMatters DVD
Staff Matters
About Staff Matters
What is the Staff Matters Resource?
Why Staff Mental Health and Wellbeing?
The Staff Matters Model
Ideas on How to Use Staff Matters
What Staff Matters is Not
Critical Beliefs
Staff Matters and MindMatters
Feedback on Staff Matters
School Partnerships
Getting Started
The Thriving Self
The Interpersonal
The Professional
The Organisational
School in the Community
Discussion List
Professional Development
Links

Why Staff Mental Health and Wellbeing?

  • The importance of addressing staff mental health and wellbeing was identified in the health-promoting school resources. The three interconnected areas of ethos and environment, teaching and learning, and school partnerships from the WHO model are the basis for the MindMatters resource.

  • The other starting point for this initiative was the feedback from MindMatters training sessions over four years to March 2005. Fifty-thousand participants (most teachers attending on a voluntary basis) indicated that the MindMatters mental health promotion materials for students were relevant to their own experience and knowledge. Often they find themselves directly addressing staff mental health and wellbeing issues. Increasingly, schools are requesting staff mental health and wellbeing days as a precursor for work on mental health and wellbeing for students.

  • Our feedback on the MindMatters professional development approach shows that it is successful because we use processes that build a safe environment that enables staff to discuss and explore the issues. (The key topics include bullying and harassment, resilience, stress and coping, help seeking, connectedness, mental illness, loss and grief.)

  • The 2002-05 MindMatters evaluation (by the Hunter Institute of Mental Health) tells us that mental health and wellbeing for students improved when the school undertook concerted staff training in mental health and wellbeing and/or a school curriculum review.

  • Our professional development sessions have found that staff in four states are very keen to engage with health and wellbeing from a range of perspectives.

  • Research has shown:

    • a clear link between staff mental health and student mental health and wellbeing
    • the importance of having functional adults in schools as role models and the key adult for many students
    • the enormous impact on classroom learning of individual teachers and their individual feelings of self-confidence and efficacy.

  • State education systems are increasingly recognising the importance of mental health within occupational health and safety and welfare, and investing in staff information and individual help websites and services.