Regional, rural, and remote health care services, particularly those offering specialised services, are disproportionately impacted by the resourcing and recruitment challenges experienced by the broader health care system. This reality is well understood by Territorians and the impacts of the transient nature of the NT, long service wait times, and lack of specialised health care services has resulted in the adage of “if in pain, get on a plane,” holding fast for many. Even organizations with substantial resources frequently face challenges hiring and retaining suitably skilled staff. With a small and highly competitive talent pool, agencies often find themselves drawing from the same group of professionals—essentially shifting employees between organizations without growing the workforce. The resulting staffing challenges of this environment in turn can drive services to employ short term client management strategies to address service pressures, at times at the expense of staff wellbeing, team culture, or long-term service sustainability and growth.

Despite its position as a well-funded Federal Government agency, Open Arms Veterans and Family Counselling NT is not immune to the impacts of these factors. Indeed, as the Territory’s only dedicated and specialised military aware mental health and wellbeing service, developing solutions to navigate this environment and its resulting pressures has been critical to ensuring Veterans and their families have access to the mental health supports they require. In this presentation, Director Open Arms NT will present a case study on the interventions utilised by her team to systematically address the impacts of skilled worker shortages on client and staff wellbeing outcomes. These include implementing a novel lived-experience first triaging process for sub-clinical mental health presentations, embracing episodic and strengths-based care principles to enhance client autonomy and self-determination, building a student placement to recruitment pathway, and prioritising staff well-being through redefined work expectations and support processes.