Towards a comprehensive child mental health system: Exploring workforce availability

Recognising that mental health is part of children’s overall development – something that is shaped by their family, community and environment – can help shift the focus beyond just diagnosing conditions. It encourages a broader approach that supports the continuum of mental health and wellbeing, benefiting all children. Understanding the experiences and needs of children, families and workforces better equips practitioners, organisations and systems to deliver the right care at the right time.

Held in October 2025, this was the first webinar in a three-part series titled Towards a comprehensive child mental health system: Exploring data and policy.

This webinar:

• presents data on the prevalence of child mental conditions, indictors of mental health vulnerability, service usage, and risk and protective factors
• examines a broader conceptualisation of the child mental health workforce and current workforce distribution
• introduces Emerging Minds’ vision for a comprehensive and coordinated child mental health system.

The webinar unpacks national Australian datasets to draw out insights about population need (current and future) and workforce availability, exploring the opportunity that exists to leverage the engagement many professionals have with children and families every day across Australia.

The session aims to support organisations’ use of local data to inform the design of optimal, localised workforce and service responses.

Led by Dr Melinda Goodyear (Chief Advisor: Policy and Impact, Emerging Minds and Senior Lecturer, School of Rural Health, Monash University), the webinar’s expert panel includes:

• Claire Marsh (Senior Research Officer, Emerging Minds)
• Katrine Scharling-Gamba (Research & Evaluation Coordinator, Emerging Minds and Adjunct Research Associate, Monash University)