Key people

Brad Morgan is the Director of Emerging Minds and leads the delivery of national infant, child, adolescent and family mental health strategies. These include the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health and the Children of Parents with Mental Illness initiative. His leadership is focused on bringing together practice and lived experience expertise together with international and Australian research to support the design and delivery of national mental health promotion, prevention and early intervention strategies that improve the mental health of infants, children, young people and their families. He brings his background in Occupational Therapy, rural health, early childhood development and mental health promotion, prevention and early intervention to the fore by leading systems change and workforce development strategies that build the knowledge, skills and capacity across systems and workforces. His contextual awareness and understanding of rural nuances drives his commitment to ensure learning and development is relevant and available to practitioners across Australia especially in rural and remote Australia.

Dan Moss has been Manager, Practice Development at Emerging Minds since 2017. Previously he worked as Assistant Director, Performance, Reporting and Evaluation at the Department for Child Protection. In this role, he worked closely with the Early Intervention Research Directorate to explore the social determinants of child disadvantage and child protection involvement. Dan worked for Uniting Communities for fifteen years, as a practitioner, supervisor and senior manager in a range of services with children, parents and families dealing with the effects of family violence, child sexual abuse, mental health conditions and drug and alcohol use. As a practitioner, Dan had a strong interest in narrative engagement strategies with children, parents and families. Dan’s PhD thesis included research on approaches to men’s behaviour change programs and a creative writing component.

Dr Goodyear leads development and implementation of the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health's research and evaluation strategy, and the Research and Evaluation team. She specialises in codesign and capacity building of research and evaluation methodologies to support the translation of evidence into practice. Melinda has a background in psychology, family resilience and neuroscience, and 20+ years experience working as an implementation scientist and researcher of intergenerational vulnerability in families. Also as a Senior Research Fellow at Monash University, she is particularly interested in understanding how to support and promote mental health and wellbeing among family members. Dr Goodyear has an established academic track record and demonstrated ability to conduct complex quantitative, qualitative and mixed method studies with highly vulnerable and marginalised people, including children. With 75+ peer reviewed publications (including 60+ journals), she has been awarded >$6 million dollars in competitive research funding to explore the needs of families where there is a mental illness, including workforce development initiatives with mental health and social services to address those needs. Melinda’s broad work covers: supporting organisations and workforces in understanding the program theory behind key outcomes they want to achieve; understanding the evidence base from academic literature, practitioners and families; practice design and implementation of evidence based interventions; knowledge translation and organisational change approaches, including the building of self-determination in practitioners and families; and evaluation design and quality improvement approaches.

Julie is responsible for leading and managing the Human Resource and Occupational Health and Safety Management functions at Emerging Minds. Julie brings a wealth of Human Resource expertise to Emerging Minds, with over 30 years of experience, having previously held the positions of Manager, Human Resources, and Workforce Director, at the Women’s & Children’s Health Network; Manager, Employee Relations at Flinders Medical Centre; and Manager, Human Resources and Occupational Health & Safety at EPAS, SA Health. Julie was also a member of the Women’s & Children’s Health Network and EPAS executive groups, which were tasked with overseeing the implementation of organisational goals, including workforce planning, organisational development, business planning and financial management.