Beyond Blue
Beyond Blue was appointed to lead the creation and rollout of Be You, a national mental health in education initiative, by the Australian Government in June 2017.
Through Be You, Beyond Blue’s aim is to heighten the importance of building mentally healthy learning communities across Australia and encouraging educators and learning communities to implement Be You.
It has taken a village of Australian and state and territory education and mental health stakeholders to inform the design, development, implementation and evaluation of Be You. These groups and networks bring together experts from multiple sectors including education, mental health, suicide prevention, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education, research and evaluation, behaviour change and implementation science.
Their work has been built on the successes and commitment of organisations that helped develop and implement the original programs KidsMatter, MindMatters, headspace School Support and Response Ability – Australian Psychological Society, Principal Australia Institute, Early Childhood Australia, headspace and Everymind.
Beyond Blue has contracted two highly reputable national organisations to deliver Be You in schools and early learning services. Early Childhood Australia and headspace bring a collective wealth of knowledge in their respective areas of educational and mental health expertise to enable Be You to be a seamless framework from the early years to 18.
Beyond Blue acknowledges the range of people and organisations who have been instrumental in informing the current Be You framework. The success of Be You is attributed to the continuation of the many relationships Beyond Blue and its delivery partners Early Childhood Australia and headspace have nationally, and these partners will help inform continuous improvements to Be You and maximise its usefulness to educators, schools, early learning services and the broader community.
Early Childhood Australia and headspace
Early Childhood Australia and headspace are Be You’s delivery partners.
Be You Consultants across both organisations provide support to early learning services and schools registered for Be You.
Early Childhood Australia’s Consultants apply a national approach to implementation support and recruitment. Regardless of their geographic location, Consultants work with registered Be You early learning services and schools located throughout Australia. Consultants also promote, recruit and connect Be You early learning services and schools across the nation.
headspace's team of Consultants work with primary and secondary schools across Australia. Each of the eight state and territory teams work directly with Australian schools to embrace and adopt the Be You initiative. They develop and use a range of strategies nationally and regionally that allow the teams to build quality relationships with schools and stakeholders. headspace also supports secondary schools to prepare for, respond to and recover together where there has been a death by suicide.
All Consultants facilitate online events designed to assist with initial goal-setting and planning for Be You Professional Learning.
Consultants also work to promote Be You registration through a range of online and onsite activities and assist early learning services and schools to check in on their progress, discuss strategies, engage them in available professional development opportunities using a blended learning approach and affirm, celebrate and share the wonderful work early learning services and schools are achieving within mental health in education.