ABOUT MHCN

MHCN is the peak body for mental health carers in NSW. Founded as ARAFMI in 1974 by social worker Margaret Lukes, she believed there needed to be more support for families, friends and carers of people living with a mental illness.

Mental health carers are people who support friends, partners, members of their family, kinship groups or communities, when they experience mental illness.

MHCN is the peak body in NSW for mental health carers, advocating for a vision of safe and competent mental health services and systems that recognise and respect carers as partners in care planning and delivery, to achieve recovery.

MHCN’s Mission is to support, empower, capacity build, advocate with mental health carers to ensure their voices and experiences are heard.

ABOUT THE ROLE

Are you passionate about mental health reform and ensuring people’s voices are heard for systemic change? Do you have experience in systemic policy and advocacy work? Do you get excited about policy development, research, holding consultations, and delivering co-design activities? We’re looking for you!

The Policy Officer role will work to help MHCN’s policy and advocacy work to capture the authentic voice of people with experience of serious and persistent mental distress and of their carers, family, friends and kin and fairly and effectively represent their views, experience and needs in systemic advocacy. The Policy Officer will report to the Policy Manager and will work as part of MHCN’s Policy and Advocacy Team (PAT).

These tasks and activities will be undertaken either as part of MHCN’s core program of systemic advocacy under its role as peak body for mental health carers, or as part of the Disability Advocacy Futures Program (DAFP) that MHCN has been funded to deliver.

MHCN is an equal opportunity employer and encourages applications from all qualified applicants and strongly encourages applications from people with diverse backgrounds including First Nations people, LGBTQIA+ people, culturally and linguistically diverse people, people living with disabilities and people with a lived experience of or caring for someone living with a mental health condition and/or psychosocial disability.

MHCN encourages applicants to request reasonable adjustments to facilitate the recruitment process. MHCN will consider reasonable adjustments requests to facilitate employment of the right candidate. For further information or discussion, please contact Laura Knight at MHCNadmin@mentalhealthcarersnsw.org

Interested?

Read the Recruitment Kit below, and send your application (CV and responses to all Essential Selection Criteria as listed in the Kit) to Laura Knight at mhcnadmin@mentalhealthcarersnsw.org

Incomplete applications will not be considered.

Applications close 11.59pm Sunday 2nd April