Positive Humanity – Social Change Campaign

To meet growing service demand, greater job uptake is needed amongst young people in roles such as personal care, allied health assistants and community support workers. The Positive Humanity campaign is designed to move young people aged between 15 to 24, to the contemplative stage of engagement with the sector and influence an increase in training rates and employment outcomes.

The campaign delivers 4 free modules through our partner Year13’s online platform. Participants will learn about different career paths in the sector, get a deeper understanding of what it is like to work in various jobs, and hear from other young people currently working in the sectors.

The HSSO is also engaging 15 employers and sector peak bodies to be profiled on the platform. Each organisation will have the capacity to highlight current employment opportunities, benefits of working in their specific sectors and engage directly with young people on recruitment processes. In this way the Positive Humanity campaign provides an important link in connecting young people with practical insights and real job opportunities available in the human services sector.

The platform will provide practical resources on qualifications, accessing subsidised training and relevant traineeships whilst highlighting the importance of personal traits and transferable experiences. This will better match potential employees with a range of sector roles. Skilled, empathic, and adaptable staff are seen as critical to how human services providers can successfully deliver services to improve the lives of people in our communities.

The campaign includes ongoing evaluation processes to measure changes in sentiment and intent to pursue sector related study or employment, and levels of engagement with the campaign. Year13 undertook initial baseline research in preparation for the campaign. The study found that while 76% of young people said they thought working in human services would be ‘rewarding’, 55% also said they thought it would be ‘hard work’. The research, which surveyed young people nationally, revealed only 7% of young people ‘definitely want to pursue a career’ in the human services sector, 20% are ‘likely’ to and 32% are ‘neutral’. Over 40% said they are ‘unlikely’ or ‘definitely wouldn’t’. The aim of Positive Humanity is to engage and educate the group who selected ‘likely to’ or ‘neutral’ on the many benefits of working in the sector and encourage them to consider taking on a career in the human services sector.