Mental Health Practitioners in Specialist Schools (Reference 131)
The Mental Health Practitioners in Specialist Schools (MHP) initiative provides funding to government specialist school campuses with secondary-aged enrolments (12 years+) to employ a suitably qualified Mental Health Practitioner (that is, a fully registered Mental Health Nurse, Occupational Therapist, Psychologist or Social Worker) for between 2 and 4 days a week.
Mental Health Practitioners provide direct counselling support to students, early intervention services and whole-school mental health and wellbeing promotion and prevention activities. They also coordinate supports for students with complex needs.
For further information on the MHP initiative, refer to Mental health practitioners in in the department’s Mental health and wellbing .
Student Resource Package (SRP) funding is provided to cover the salary of an ongoing school-based Mental Health Practitioner. Participating specialist schools receive between a minimum of 0.4 FTE and a maximum of 0.8 FTE, depending on their secondary-aged student enrolments.
MHP initiative funding eligibility for schools with combined Primary/Secondary-aged enrolments
All participating specialist schools with secondary-aged enrolments will receive funding for an ongoing MHP from the beginning of Term 1, 2023. For specialist schools with both primary and secondary-aged student enrolments, funding allocations will be determined based on secondary-aged (12+ years) enrolments only.
FTE allocations will be fixed from the release of the Confirmed SRP (April 2023) for 2 years. At the conclusion of the 2-year period, FTE allocations will be reviewed and adjustments may be made.
Funding is allocated as credit and cash funding.
Special development campuses of mainstream schools are funded at school level.
Calculation
School FTE Allocation (Part 1) = FTE allocated as per below ranges:
- less than 100 students = 0.4 FTE
- greater than 100 to 250 students = 0.6 FTE
- 250+ students = 0.8 FTE
Funding calculation (Part 2) = School FTE allocation (rounded to one decimal) * Rate
Rate
Rate = Midpoint of an Education Support, Level 1 Range 4, position including school SRP on-costs
Reviewed 21 June 2023