CHCMHS001 - Work with people with mental health issues

For Melbourne campuses

Assessment tasks will be designed to reinforce and extend knowledge and skill competence within set and controlled parameters in accordance with each unit’s learning performance evidence requirements, including demonstration in simulated environment within periodic and scheduled timelines.

Students will be expected to demonstrate the following required skills:

• worked with at least 3 people with mental health issues in ways that support individual empowerment and recovery through:

• use of communication techniques
• provision and adaptation of services to meet particular needs

Students will also be expected to demonstrate the following knowledge:

• legal and ethical considerations (international, national, state/territory, local) when working with people with mental health issues, and how these are applied in organisations and individual practice:

• children in the workplace
• codes of practice
• discrimination
• dignity of risk
• duty of care
• human rights
• informed consent
• mandatory reporting
• privacy, confidentiality and disclosure
• policy frameworks
• records management
• rights and responsibilities of workers, employers and individuals
• specific mental health legislation – impact on individual workers and consequences of breaches
• work role boundaries – responsibilities and limitations
• work health and safety

• values and principles of the mental health sector, including:

• recovery
• recovery oriented practice
• health promotion and prevention
• holistic approach
• empowerment/disempowerment
• access and equity
• early intervention
• rights
• social justice and inclusion
• citizenship

• different contexts of mental health work, including:

• historical context, changing attitudes to mental health and approaches to working with people with mental health issues
• social context. changing societal views of mental health and approaches to working with people
• political context, government policies and initiatives affecting the mental health sector
• economic context, the current economic situation as it relates to and affects the mental health sector and the subsequent impact on people

• impact of own attitudes on working with people with mental health issues
• key issues facing people with mental health illnesses, including impact of prejudice and discrimination
• myths and facts about mental illness
• types of mental illness
• existing services to address a person’s needs and rights
• appropriate responses to changes in mental health, mental distress and crisis
• circumstances in which referral to a health or other professional is appropriate