Summary
Description
Rural Mental Health Lead
Organization: Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) – Alberta Division and Centre for Suicide Prevention
Location: Hybrid, Alberta (Full-Time 1 year, 35 hours a week, Monday – Friday 8:30am-4:30pm)
About Us:
The Canadian Mental Health Association Alberta Division and Centre for Suicide Prevention (CMHA AB + CSP) focuses on community mental health care, emphasizing education, training, advocacy, peer and family support in addition to suicide prevention. We are a non-profit organization that operates within the CMHA Federation at the provincial level to enhance the mental health of all Albertans.
About the Initiative:
The Rural Mental Health Project (RMHP) is a province-wide initiative designed to strengthen community mental health and recovery across rural Alberta. By prioritizing local leadership, equity, and sustainability, the RMHP empowers rural communities to address mental health in ways that reflect their unique strengths, needs, and values.
Through a combination of capacity building, community grants, and network support, the RMHP enables rural communities to lead the development and implementation of Community Action Plans (CAPs) tailored to local contexts—while maintaining access to provincial coordination, resources, and expertise. The principles that guide our work include health promotion, community-development, strength-based, using whole-community approaches, while considering the full lifespan development of our communities.
Position Overview:
Reporting to the Program Director and utilizing a collaborative management approach, this one-year maternity leave position is responsible for the guidance and success of the Rural Mental Health project. This includes developing relationships with communities, guiding the staff team in the implementation of grant objectives, grant reporting, fiscal accountability, coordination of contracted services, and organizational alignment.
The RMH Lead position requires excellent time management and problem-solving skills with an emphasis on community, strength based, and systematic approaches. There is a high volume of work, multiple priorities and numerous partners to be engaged. The ability to work in a collaborative team environment is important as well as the ability to communicate professionally to maintain strong working relationships with community members. The team is well established, and this role will require someone who is collaborative and willing to carry out the strategic plan that has been created by the team.
Key Responsibilities:
Project Administration
- Monitor and account for the program operating budget.
- Coordinate with staff team, Advisory Group and external partners regarding the ongoing evaluation framework including consistent and meaningful evaluation, outputs and outcomes
- Work alongside the staff team, Advisory Group and CMHA AB & CSP leadership to develop proposals, budgets, and reports to funders and CMHA AB & CSP.
- Oversee the animator capacity building, network development & community grant process.
Team & Community Coordination
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Guide and mentor project staff in creating work plans and ensuring alignment of responsibilities with project principles, funding activities and insights from interested parties.
- Ensure an environment of co-creation that models the principles and values of the project and provides an opportunity for team members to grow in leadership and ownership of project success.
- Lead and facilitate the RMH Advisory Team, gathering insight and guidance on project implementation and other decisions.
- Support the development of the Rural Mental Health Network including building and maintaining relationships with rural communities in Alberta and external partners, participating in meetings and events, and visiting rural Alberta communities as needed.
- Guide the team to develop and maintain knowledge exchange activities that support capacity building in rural communities.
- Be an active participant in organizational leadership, clearly communicate organizational principles, policies, processes and procedures to ensure consistency and collaboration across projects and departments.
- Coordinate contracted services (i.e., evaluation)
Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in a related field (e.g. Public Health, Community Engagement, Sociology) or a combination of education and recent and relevant experience
- Knowledge of the non-profit sector, community development, fostering connection, collaboration and knowledge exchange
- Expertise with Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), including Outlook, Zoom, and grant management software, other interactive and information management tools
- Excellent organization, interpersonal, written, and verbal communications skills
- Experience in social innovation, systems-thinking, and critical thinking an asset
- Mentoring, strong relationship building skills and experience in team leadership (2-3 years)
- Ability to see possibility realistically to encourage community empowerment with curiosity, wholistic system thinking, social innovation and appreciative inquiry
- Ability to be self-motivated and flexible, with the ability to manage and prioritize multiple tasks in a fast-paced environment of frequent change and within an ambiguous landscape
- Experience writing reports and strategic planning documents
Why Join Us?
- Be part of a dynamic team making a difference in rural Alberta.
- Enjoy a flexible, primarily remote work environment.
- Contribute to meaningful community development and mental health initiatives.
How to Apply:
Send your resume and cover letter to recruitment@cmha.ab.ca
While we appreciate all applications, we will only contact candidates that meet the requirements for the position. Please note that we are unable to accept phone calls about this position.
