Professor Lynette Joubert, Department of Social Work, University of Melbourne
Professor Lynette Joubert is an international authority in health social work, with over four decades of experience of promoting health and mental health social work. She has been at the forefront of Practice Research both in Australia and internationally and is a leading exponent of clinical data mining, informing evidence-based models of care that narrow service gaps and improve outcomes in vulnerable populations.
The author of more than 160 peer-reviewed publications, she is the originator and academic lead of the 5+1 Academic Practitioner Collaboration between the University of Melbourne and five teaching hospitals. She has supervised 47 graduate research theses and supported international collaborations in the UK, Europe and South-East Asia. Her work forms the bridge between research, policy, and community service, strengthening the impact and visibility of social work in health and mental health in the community.
Continuity and Change: National Audits of Health Social Work as Evidence for the Future
Health social work audit studies provide a powerful evidence base for determining the scope, depth, and distinct contribution of social work in the health and mental health service context. In 2014, a landmark multi-site audit was undertaken in Australia across 17 health and mental health services, with 542 social workers documenting details of their practice at five-minute intervals in the course of a 24-hour period of their professional practice. The co-created tool, developed in partnership between the University of Melbourne and social work practitioners, systematically captured, in total, in excess of 10,000 items of social work activity over the study period. The findings highlighted the Social Work’s pre-eminent role in direct therapeutic care, advocacy, interdisciplinary collaboration, discharge planning, and community linkage, underpinning safe, person-centred and integrated care in the hospital setting.
In 2025, the study will be repeated with updated codes that reflect contemporary practice changes and emerging service demands. The revised and refined Audit tool, co-developed with over 30 health and mental health social work departments with national practitioner engagement and reflection, now captures new areas such as trauma-informed care, integrated life-stage programs as well as increasingly complex interprofessional roles. By evidencing both continuity and evolution in practice, the audit will provide a demonstration of how Social Work is able to adapt to systemic and societal needs while maintaining its unique and traditional social and relational focus.
Beyond benchmarking practice, the audit process has been shown to strengthen the profession by making generally visible the impact of social work in health settings, informing service planning, and reinforcing the need for appropriate investment. In addition, the audit study has modelled a novel academic–practice collaboration of producing rigorous practice research that has advanced the role and recognition of social work in health and mental health services.