Student Wellbeing Innovation Fund

The NSW Department of Education has established a Student Wellbeing Innovation Fund to support and encourage bold, innovative programs and/or initiatives that are ceated and offered by external providers, to be sourced by primary and secondary schools for the purposes of educating, informing or directly supporting individual students to improve their mental health and wellbeing.

The Student Wellbeing Innovation Fund will directly support student wellbeing outcomes and will build on the department’s commitment to quality assure external student wellbeing programs to enhance the development and provision of high-quality external providers delivering evidence-based wellbeing programs/initiatives.

The Student Wellbeing Innovation Fund has two streams:

1. To provide one-off capacity building funding for providers of wellbeing programs/initiatives who are wanting to scale or deliver their wellbeing programs and/or initiatives in new areas or to new cohorts listed as a priority area.
2. To support ‘incubator’ student wellbeing programs and/or initiatives by providing seed funding (via one-off grants) to providers to research, create, develop and test new approaches to supporting and addressing student wellbeing issues.

There are five Priority Areas for applications under the Student Wellbeing Innovation Fund, embedding the wellbeing elements of belonging, resilience and behaviour, including:

• Primary school-aged students
• Students transitioning to Kindergarten and High School
• Students living in regional and remote areas
• Students from target cohorts, including First Nations students and culturally and linguistically diverse students; students with additional needs and/or disability; students from a migrant or refugee background; and female students
• Cyber health