“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.
UniForum uses credible, granular data to help universities of all kinds improve services and achieve efficiencies, freeing up as much resource as possible to support their academic mission
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
benchmarking
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...
Cubane’s unique approach allows like-for-like comparisons between universities of widely different size, shape and research intensity
System planning and design
Engagement and co-design
Service redesign and integration
Monitoring and evaluation
For more than a decade Cubane’s UniForum programme has helped universities of all kinds achieve excellent, streamlined professional administrative services as efficiently as possible.
Our member universities, ranging from large research intensive institutions to smaller teaching focused bodies, have repurposed as much as 6 per cent of their revenue from administration to teaching and research.
UniForum is a comprehensive resourcing diagnostic platform designed to help universities understand which activities and services are efficient, and where they can free up capacity to better support teaching, learning, research and other priorities.
Members benefit from a decade of experience analysing the capacity and activities of more than 500,000 staff. UniForum uses credible, granular data to improve service standards and maximise investment for students, researchers and others.
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
Build resourcing profile for some key central functions e.g. HR, Finance
Use findings to drive buy-in and momentum across the institution
Conduct Service Effectiveness Assessment to understand customer experience and real priorities
Participate in exclusive practice-sharing forums with other members
Within 2 months: Rapid initial benchmarking
Insight
Insight
PODCAST
System design choices: The building blocks of health and human services
"
Universities get actionable results back quickly
The UniForum programme is designed to allow universities to achieve their key goals
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 UnifORUM
COMPLETE CAPACITY
Understand total capacity and real cost for all key administrative and delivery functions, from high level (e.g. HR, Student Support) to specific activities (e.g. timetabling, IT help desk)
BEST PRACTICE
Exclusive access to insights from fellow member universities who are further down the track in transforming services and delivering efficiencies
RAPID & EASY
An approach to collecting data that puts minimal burden on managers, with complete flexibility over timing and real time access to an up-to-date total view of resourcing
Flexible data collection - universities can collect data in-year and at a frequency to suit each institution, taking account of workload pressures
Real time reporting - universities can update their resource profile throughout the year, to help stakeholders report on current trends, benefits realisation and maintain cost control
Advanced data visualisation tool with a wide range of pre-configured comparative analyses
Strategic planning apps allow modelling of changes to the university’s size and shape and the identification of any risks or challenges
Service effectiveness benchmarking gives service owners actionable results on how their service performs relative to the sector 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 UniForum activity measures to allow comparison
In-depth lead practice studies to better understand service delivery model choices and the best ways to accelerate progress
Discipline-based support services benchmarking gives faculties better information for planning their resourcing levels based on their discipline mix
UniForum 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.
UniForum takes a bottom-up approach
hOW DOES IT WORK?
We understand the need to move quickly but also to have the flexibility to work with different areas of the university in a way that suits them. That’s why Cubane offers both rapid results within 2 months and a staged, tailored approach.
KEY BENEFIT
Rapid access to real results and best practice about key service areas
Expand resourcing profiling to academic divisions & remaining central functions
Updated results available as soon as each progressive update is made
Engage managers of service areas to interpret results and set priorities based on practical process, system and capability factors
Within 6 months: Steadily involving other
service areas
KEY BENEFIT
Setting clear actionable priorities, quickly build momentum
Finalise collection to produce full 12 month benchmarking results
Establish progressive updating process as BAU
Ensure key organisational and service leaders have access to the data they need to drive improvement
Use findings to underpin operating model redesign and other transformation priorities
Within 8 months: Using data routinely to underpin key priorities
KEY BENEFIT
Integrating UniForum data into businesses as usual processes and key decisions
Simon Lancaster
Principal, Nous Group
+ 44 20 3687 2512
simon.lancaster@
nousgroup.com
NOUSGROUP.COM
NOUSGROUP.COM
CUBANECONSULTING.COM
CUBANECONSULTING.COM
Phil Copestake
Managing Director, UK & Europe, Cubane
+ 44 20 3282 3810
phil.copestake@
cubaneconsulting.com
UniForum is managed by Cubane Consulting – a world-leading provider of benchmarking services that became part of the Nous Group in April 2021. For more than a decade Cubane’s UniForum programme has helped many of the world’s leading universities optimise their administration and support services and is now expanding its offer to meet the needs of the public sector.
BACK TO TOP
BACK TO TOP
Working with us over time, universities have seen savings of 15-25% across administrative operations. UniForum’s key features can deliver university leaders the clarity and insight they need to make critical decisions within just a couple of months.
45-60
mins per manager
Median time:
8-12 mins
Staffing
inputs
UniForum
Resourcing Diagnostic Platform
Supplementary data
Baseline collection
Progressive
updates (quarterly)
Key operating metrics
UniForum
Reporting Platform
Diagnosis &
opportunities
Globally benchmarked whole university view
Priorities for individual directorates, faculties, departments
Actionable insights for university leadership teams
Read examples of our best practice research here
Some of the universities we work with
