Practitioners Families Organisations Researchers Learning login

Key people

  • Brad Morgan

    Director
    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.

  • Helen Francis

    Manager, Partnerships and Implementation
    Helen is responsible for leading the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health Partnership and Implementation strategy. She has vast knowledge of Human and Community Services that includes over 30 years executive management experience, identifying service gaps, developing community partnerships, and advocating for quality training and systems support to improve knowledge, skills and practice across service sectors. She has lead action research, community consultation, community development, co-design and workforce development capacity building initiatives. Helen’s recent roles have involved developing evidence-informed training products and delivery of these to national audiences along with supported systems and implementation strategies to inform practice change to key audiences such as the ACT government and Queensland and New South Wales Health. Before joining Emerging Minds Helen was the Project Manager of national workforce development initiative Protecting and Nurturing Children: Building Capacity Building Bridges (BCBB) at the Australian Centre for Child Protection, University of South Australia. This initiative was responsible for supporting organisations across Australia in adult-focused, and child and family focused services to enhance their knowledge, skills and collaborative relationships to support parents to meet the developmental and social and emotional needs of children in their care.

  • Dan Moss

    Manager, Practice Development
    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.

  • Jocelyn Marsland

    Manager, Communications and Marketing
    Jocelyn is responsible for leading the development and implementation of Emerging Minds' communications and marketing strategy. Her knowledge, skills and insight ensure its relevance to stakeholders across a range of sectors and a broad national audience. Her passion, drive and commitment to strategies that can make a real difference is scaffolded on over 15 years’ international experience in value driven not-for-profit organisations. She brings a wealth of experience and initiative ideas from her work in the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia including the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), the Graeme Dingle Foundation (GDF) and the Children of Parents with a Mental Illness (COPMI) national initiative. Her commitment to clear communication that is respectful to the diversity of populations and their experiences underpins her work.

  • Dr Melinda Goodyear

    Manager, Research, Evaluation and Design
    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.

  • Rachael Snedden

    Manager, Projects and Performance
    Rachael is responsible for leading Emerging Minds' reporting, business process improvement and development activities. She has held a range of project, operational and managerial roles, including six years managing fundraising programs in the not-for-profit and university sectors. As Project Lead at Cancer Council SA, she led the planning and execution of all state based funding products, including events like Ride for a Reason, Relay For Life and the community fundraising portfolio. She was responsible for developing project plans, communications, donor engagement and stewardship strategies through to event day execution. Rachael brings project management, systems and process development skills to the Emerging Minds team. She is passionate about ensuring our work is delivered efficiently and effectively to optimise Emerging Minds' impact on the health and wellbeing of Australia’s infants, children and adolescents.

  • Julie Block

    Manager, Human Resources
    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.

Subscribe to our newsletters