Manager - Employee Psychosocial Advice and Support

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 several teams that span from prevention, through to response and recovery, along with 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 mental health and 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 aim of the Employee Psychosocial Advice and Support Team is to lead the development of develop policy advice and resources and to lead a team who provide expert specialist advice and support to schools to identify, assess and manage psychological hazards and to comply with current and future OHS requirements to prevent and respond to mental injury.
The Manager - Employee Psychosocial Advice and Support will provide leadership and strategic oversight of the program and ensure adherence to new OHS psychosocial regulations in schools, act as a point of escalation for complex cases and will continue to advance the department's preventative approach to reducing risk to mental health and wellbeing.
The Manager will empower and enable the team to proactively identify schools requiring support and triage and respond. This will require working closely with the existing OHS Implementation team as well as other ESWID teams including wellbeing promotion and response and intervention.
The Manager will have demonstrated expertise and skills in psychosocial hazard identification and support ideally from within an education sector perspective. A risk management, allied health or OHS qualifications are desirable.
A key role of the Manager will be to lead a team of central and regionally-based staff to work with Area and Regional workforces to upskill and build capacity of psychosocial hazard identification and response. The role will also support the team to work with schools directly across a continuum of supports, including working with the OHS Implementation Branch on the broader obligations under the OHS Act.
The Manager reports to the Director, Employee Mental Health Reform Branch.
Attributes
The required capabilities for the role are set out in the position description (see attachment).
Qualifications and Experience
**Essential**: Relevant qualification in Occupational Health and Safety, mental healthor related field, and relevant experience.
**Essential**: Current valid Victorian drivers license.
Further Information
Applicants are asked to provide a statement of no more than two pages against the Key Selection Criteria including addressing the essential qualifications and experience listed.
Applicants requiring adjustments can contact the nominated contact person.
Applications close 11:59pm on Tuesday 29th October, 2024.