Establishment—full-time equivalent staff (paid) (mental health consumer workers), average NNNN.NN

Guide for use:

Mental health consumer workers are persons employed (or engaged via contract) on a part-time or full-time basis, i.e. the person received a salary or contract fee on a regular basis. It does not refer to arrangements where the consumer worker only received reimbursements of expenses or occasional sitting fees for attendance at meetings.

Mental health consumer workers employed at the jurisdictional or regional level are considered in-scope and should be apportioned between all establishments, as deemed appropriate by the jurisdiction.

The average is to be calculated from pay period figures. The length of the pay period is assumed to be a fortnight.

Data on full-time equivalent staffing numbers by category should be consistent with data on salaries and wages by staffing category. If the full-time equivalent for contract staff is not collected then salaries for those contract staff should be included in other recurrent expenditure data items.

Where staff provide services to more than one establishment, full-time equivalent staff figures should be apportioned between all establishments to which services are provided on the basis of hours paid for in each (salary costs should be apportioned on the same basis).

Comments:
This metadata item was amended during 1996-97. Until then, both average and end of year counts of full-time equivalent staff were included, and the end of year counts used as surrogates for the average counts if the latter were unavailable. The average count is more useful for accurate analysis of staffing inputs for establishment outputs and for assessments and comparisons of labour costs.