“The lived experience needs to be embedded in everything we do. It is no longer acceptable to design and implement solutions without people who have direct experience of mental health issues”.
The challenges to improve mental health can seem overwhelming – from insufficient services to lack of integration and difficulty navigating services for consumers, carers and families. It is essential to take a system-wide approach to action, including at the service level.
CiviForum uses credible, granular data to help government departments and agencies drive improvements and cost savings through benchmarking
Monique Jackson, Principal
The programme
Getting started
How does it work?
Contact us
Nous stands ready to help you reshape the mental health system through:
gETTING STARTED
From 2014 to 2019 Tim served as WA’s Mental Health Commissioner, leading a team of 250 people that commissioned mental health services and gave policy and strategy advice to government. He also served on the board of Beyond Blue for 11 years, including nine as Deputy Chair. Tim leads a team of mental experts at Nous to improve outcomes for mental...
To discuss how we can work together to build a more efficient and effective public sector, get in touch today.
Contact us
ONE SYSTEM
Penny has over 30 years’ experience in government, including as CEO of the ACT Department of Health and Community Services and the CEO of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. She has a strong understanding of the systems challenges of delivering desired health outcomes. Penny regularly works in mental health policy and is a former...
Monique has over 15 years’ experience in health and human services, with extensive experience in mental health strategy, evaluation, system and service design and organisational performance. She has led large mental health and alcohol and drug evaluations and a turnaround strategy for an underperforming mental health service.
Ian has 25 years of experience in Australian healthcare, ranging from operational management of hospital, community and mental health services to participation in national policy development. His mental health experience includes work on development and implementation of the National Mental Health Strategy, national mental health data...
Ian leads Nous’ health work in WA. He has significant experience in mental health strategy development, service design, program evaluations and business case development. He has worked closely with the WA
Mental Health Commission and the WA Primary Health Alliance to support mental health commissioning and is...
Doron has worked with government departments, statutory bodies and service providers across the health, mental health and human services sectors. He has worked with clients on operating models, strategic planning, organisational structures and processes, and evaluations. As a registered psychologist with clinical experience, Doron knows...
Heidi brings over 20 years of international health experience in public, private and NFP environments, with expertise in public health and a background in psychology. She has experience running national health evaluations, organisational and health policy reviews and a deep understanding of patient experience, vulnerable...
Simone has extensive experience across health and human services. She brings an understanding of mental health policy, systems and services; including gaps and intersections at the health/human services interface. Her work focuses on large scale system/sector redesigns, organisational performance reviews, strategy and policy development...
A single consistent definition for activities across departments and public bodies that enables apples-for-apples comparison and data-informed decision making to deliver savings and control costs – we call this the Activity Framework.
System planning and design
Engagement and co-design
Service redesign and integration
Monitoring and evaluation
Public sector organisations must improve their financial and operating performance in the context of challenging public finances.
Ministers, accounting officers and departments should have visibility and control over their resourcing – but they lack reliable data to compare themselves with other organisations and make informed, strategic choices.
CiviForum is a comprehensive resourcing diagnostic platform designed to help government departments and agencies understand who and what is efficient, and where they can save costs.
It builds from a decade-long benchmarking programme analysing the information and activities of more than 500,000 staff. CiviForum uses credible, granular data to enable organisations to make decisions that will improve performance and increase savings.
How system design choices can make – or break – a mental health system
Five themes driving the reform agenda for mental health support and services
THE PROGRAMME
Finalise the Activity Framework to match UK public body activities
Raise awareness and build understanding of the process
Within 2 months: Rapid mobilisation
Previous
Next
Insight
Insight
PODCAST
System design choices: The building blocks of health and human services
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We have developed a rapid mobilisation approach
The CiviForum programme is designed to meet the needs of the public sector.
Norms
Practices
Structures
Families and communities:
the interpersonal relationships between individuals and the social networks that can influence behaviours, and the relationships between the built environment in neighbourhoods and communities.
Organisations and services:
the organisations and services that support people with complex mental health needs. These may be mental health-specific services, other health services, or social services such as housing or employment services. In Australia these can be delivered by the public, private or not-for-profit sector.
Social and policy environment:
broader society, including the laws and policies (or lack of policies). Actions that influence this level include advocacy and awareness-raising.
Individuals:
the characteristics of individuals that influence behaviour and risk factors, such as knowledge, attitudes, culture, values, gender age, economic status, goals and more.
Individual factors such as age, education, income, cultural background
Schools & workplaces
Family and community
Neighbour-hoods
Mental health services
Interpersonal relationships
Other health and social services and supports
Housing
State and Commonwealth agencies
Health, economic, education and social policies
Age, education, income, cultural background
Service providers need to consider the delivery of their services, with specific consideration to:
• Lived experience and peer workers are central to the community mental health workforce
• Wrap-around, holistic, integrated services,
and service navigation are essential to achieving positive outcomes.
CLOSE X
Learn more about Monique
Learn more about Monique
WHY CIVIfORUM
CAPACITY
Reports on total capacity and real cost across government for all key administrative and delivery functions, from high-level (e.g. HR, finance) down to granular activity levels (e.g. undertaking staff recruitment and processing payroll).
INSIGHT
Opportunities for efficiency, for example:
Are senior staff bogged down with routine repetitive tasks?
Are generalists performing activities that are much more effectively run by specialists?
BENCHMARKING
Comparisons between organisations, across departmental families and internationally, to identify top quartile performance and catalyse performance improvements.
Tailored to government activities like ministerial correspondence units and government office support, along with traditional service units like HR and Property.
Internationally informed approach based on demand from governments in the UK and Australia. We will be able to benchmark internationally as we collect more data.
Advanced data-visualisation tools with a wide range of pre-configured comparative analyses.
Point-in-time reporting apps to help stakeholders report on current trends, benefits realisation and manage spend leakage.
Strategic planning tools to facilitate scenario modelling of service model changes and target operations size and shape under different funding projections.
Service effectiveness assessment gives service owners actionable results on how their service performs relative to their peers providing them with insights on what matters most to users so they can make better service improvement choices.
Industry benchmarking provides access to measures for corporate services from other sectors and tailored activity measures to allow comparison.
CiviForum takes a bottom-up approach to data collection by using inputs from managers on the activity their staff undertake, which is updated throughout the year to ensure the data’s accuracy. This credible data underpins the diagnostics that produce clear, actionable insights.
CiviForum takes a bottom-up approach
hOW DOES IT WORK?
We understand the need to identify efficiencies and savings in the public sector is critical. As such we have developed a rapid mobilisation approach that will see insightful, actionable data being delivered to leaders within just 8 months.
KEY BENEFIT
A collection process tailored to UK government priorities
Total resourcing profile can be quickly updated at a frequency of your choosing
Increasingly light touch, integrated into recruitment and role change processes
Real time monitoring of efficiency savings, demonstrating control
Ongoing: Integrating into business as usual
KEY BENEFIT
Established and influential part of government business
Engage public bodies in data collection (2 months from start to finish)
Access to detailed results immediately upon completion
Process takes only 45 mins per manager
Within 6 months: Streamlined data collection
KEY BENEFIT
Robust platform enabling transparency and control
Comprehensive, highly reliable data
Powerful insights about true scale of savings and improvement opportunities
Engage with leadership teams to enable them to use the data and insights effectively
Within 8 months: Significant savings reliably identified
KEY BENEFIT
Quantifiable savings and
efficiency opportunities
Peter Horne
Principal, Nous Group
+ 44 20 3687 2507
peter.horne@
nousgroup.com
NOUSGROUP.COM
NOUSGROUP.COM
CiviForum from the Nous Group is informed by more than a decade of insights and experience through delivery of the UniForum programme. Around 60 of the world’s leading universities optimise their administration and support services guided by UniForum’s benchmarking data covering over 500 000 employees.
BACK TO TOP
BACK TO TOP
Working with us over time, organisations have seen savings of 15-25% across administrative operations. CiviForum’s key features can deliver public sector leaders the clarity and insight they need to make critical decisions within just several months.
45-60
mins per manager
Median time:
8-12 mins
Staffing
inputs
CiviForum
Resourcing Diagnostic Platform
Supplementary data
Baseline collection
Progressive
updates (quarterly)
Key operating metrics
CiviForum
Reporting Platform
Differences, deviations & diagnosis
Whole of government view
Directorate level improvement teams
Chief Operating Officer insights