MHiPS
Mental Health in Primary Schools, or MHiPS, is a partnership between the Centre for Community Child Health (CCCH) at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI) and the Melbourne Graduate School of Education (MGSE) at the University of Melbourne.
The MHiPS Model comprises a Mental Health Wellbeing Leader (MHWL) role (an experienced educator) and an evidence-based training program. Lize Privitera has assumed the MHiPS role and members of the leadership team have embarked on the training program. The role of the MHWL is to build the capability of the whole school about mental health and wellbeing (identification, promotion and prevention), provide support to staff to better identify and support students with mental health needs, establish clear pathways for referral for students requiring assessment and intervention, and monitor and evaluate student progress. Also, weekly information via the school newsletter will be communicated to the school community to keep parents informed of the latest evidence based strategies and current information on student’s mental health and wellbeing. Much of our current wellbeing information will now be included in this space.