Maranoa Grow Your Own Non-Clinical Community Mental Health Workforce Plan

Grow Your Own Non-Clinical Community Mental Health Workforce — Maranoa region Working Session

The community mental health and wellbeing sector is under sustained pressure. Community services organisations across Queensland report the same pattern: rising demand and thinning capacity to meet it. In the 2025 QCOSS State of the Sector survey, 81% of services reported increased demand for what they provide over the previous six months, while 48% reported difficulty finding and keeping appropriately skilled and qualified staff.

In South West Queensland, these pressures are amplified by geography. Health care and social assistance is the largest employing industry in the Darling Downs–Maranoa region, yet services consistently struggle to attract and retain workers in communities where housing is scarce, training requires leaving the region, and chronic vacancies leave remaining staff carrying unsustainable loads. In March 2026, 24 workers from 15 organisations across South West Queensland came together in Roma to name these challenges, and to start building local solutions.

Queensland Alliance for Mental Health is working with the region to develop the Grow Your Own Non-Clinical Community Mental Health Workforce Plan (Maranoa region) , a locally designed blueprint to create sustainable pathways into non-clinical mental health roles for First Nations peoples, multicultural communities, people with lived and living experience, and local community members.

This is not a consultation. It is a working session to set priorities for action.

How the day works

Morning Session - 9:30am -12:30pm

All registered attendees join the morning working session to map workforce gaps, identify what's already working, and set the priorities that will shape the Plan.

Morning tea provided | Networking lunch follows (12.30 to 1.30pm)

What is Grow Your Own?

Grow Your Own (GYO) is an approach to workforce development that builds pathways into employment from within the community, prioritising local people, local knowledge, and local solutions.

The Maranoa GYO Non-Clinical Community Mental Health Workforce Plan is being developed with, not for, the Maranoa community. It will create practical, sustainable pathways into non-clinical mental health roles: peer support workers, community connectors, coordinators, administrators, and more.

This working session is the first step in building that Plan. What is decided in the room will directly shape what gets written.

Who should attend?

This session is for anyone with a stake in growing the local mental health workforce in Maranoa and surrounding regions, including:

·       Managers & Leaders from NGOs and community organisations delivering mental health services

·       People with lived or living experience of mental health

·       People from culturally and linguistically diverse communities

·       First Nations community members and organisations

·       RTOs, TAFEs, and training providers operating in the region

·       Job network providers and employment services

·       Funding bodies, government representatives, & decision makers, including Primary Health Networks, Local Government, & Qld & Commonwealth government agencies

·       Community groups, networks, and individuals interested in local workforce pathways

If you work in, live with, fund, or care about mental health in this region, this session is for you.