Door two · Partnership
Build the model, then keep it holding.
Three tracks. Build creates the model over twelve months. Operate keeps it current and safe, year on year. Support strengthens the leaders and teams holding it. Build leads to Operate. Support can run before, alongside, after, or instead.
Build · twelve months
Implementation Partnership
A guided twelve-month build of the workforce capacity model: leadership alignment, role and task design, supervision, the university relationship, and the full resource pack released as you need it. Three levels of support, and the same model is built at every one.
From $15,500 ex GST · your level is confirmed by the Review
A STEP Implementation Partnership is not consulting days. It is a twelve-month structural change to how your school builds wellbeing capacity, for less than a fraction of one wellbeing FTE, and designed so the capacity outlasts any one staff member.
A 0.6 FTE wellbeing appointment costs $60,000 or more per year, recurring, and leaves when the person does.
Three levels. The same model, built every time.
What changes between levels is how hands-on STEP is. Never what gets built.
Level one
Equip
For schools with strong internal leadership and real supervision capacity. STEP provides the architecture, explains the resources properly, and checks it is holding. Then you run it. One onsite Setup Day and four online touchpoints.
Level two
Guide
For capable schools that want STEP alongside them through the build. Around nine guided sessions across three onsite days, Launch, Go-live and Close, with a regular operating rhythm through the first placement cycle.
Level three
Embed
For whole-school rollouts, multiple supervisors, or schools where complexity or fragility means the model needs holding. Around thirteen guided sessions across three to four onsite days, with STEP inside the leadership rhythm.
Networks and clusters of schools buying together are scoped separately. A single school always takes a normal level, however large. For schools in Zone 3 and Zone 4, the close session is delivered online rather than onsite, which removes a visit and its travel charge. Launch and go-live are the moments that change practice and stay onsite at every distance. The fee is unchanged. Your level is determined by your Readiness Index, not by preference. How the level is decided
Included at every level
- The full five-module pathway
- The Supervising Well workshop, right-sized where fewer than about three people will supervise, never removed
- Supervised placement workforce design
- Supervision and governance setup: scope, escalation, role cards
- University interface and placement narrative
- The complete artefact and template pack, released in sequence
- Staff buy-in and operating rhythm setup
- Transition planning into Operating
The upgrade clause
If the activation check finds the model is not holding, with escalation unclear, scope drifting, or supervision not occurring at benchmark, STEP recommends moving up one level for the remainder of the partnership, with the difference payable pro rata.
It is stated in the proposal and the Service Agreement, not sprung mid-year. It protects your school from a model quietly failing, and STEP’s name from being attached to one.
A named STEP Lead
Every partnership names a school STEP Lead, contractually. The person who holds the model inside your school. If your STEP Lead moves on, STEP re-anchors the model with your incoming lead at no cost. Key person change is the most common way these models drift, and this keeps yours safe through it.
Operate · annual
Operating Partnership
The annual layer that keeps STEP current, governed and safe: the right to operate, resource updates, Supervising Well cascade rights, STEP Partner School status, network participation, and the Annual Governance and Drift Review.
From $7,500 a year ex GST · banded to your intended placement capacity
An Operating Partnership is a renewal, not an entry. It is available only to schools that have completed a Build partnership, at any level. Cascade rights cannot cascade a workshop never received, a drift review needs the baseline Year 1 creates, and Partner School status attaches STEP’s name to your placement practice, so it cannot be granted unverified.
What honestly lapses without it
The last one is the real argument, and it is not a sales lever. A school operating a placement model without an annual governance review carries that risk alone.
The Governance and Drift Review
It can find drift. This is what happens next.
Confirmed. Operating to standard. Band confirmed, partnership renews, investment indexed.
Confirmed with conditions. Drift identified and remediable, and the school is willing. A Remediation Sprint follows: a re-setup session, scope matrix rebuild, supervisor re-brief and a six-week recheck. Partner School status continues subject to completion, and no indexation applies that year.
Deferred pending corrective action. A student carrying unsupervised risk work, a safeguarding process not followed, or an amber outcome unremediated after twelve months. Partner School status is suspended, and re-entry is via a new Build partnership.
Only the founder may declare a deferred outcome. It is the decision that most needs to stay centralised.
Indexation
Annual partnership investment is reviewed each year and adjusted by CPI plus up to 2%, notified at the Annual Governance and Drift Review. No adjustment applies in a year returning an amber governance outcome.
Support · annual, no prerequisites
Practice Partnership
Year-round support for the leaders and teams holding your wellbeing system: role clarity, prevention thinking and sustainable practice. No prerequisites, and no set order. People leave each session clearer about what matters and what to do next.
Practice is the front door for schools not ready to build. It is not a consolation prize, and not a step in the Build pathway. A school can stay in Practice indefinitely, or move to Build when readiness improves, which it usually will, because that is what Practice is doing.
The default recommendation
Now part of STEP Academy, the capability side of STEP. Still the cohort form of Practice, and still the usual recommendation here.
STEP Wellbeing Leaders Program
A cross-school cohort of eight to twelve wellbeing leaders. Eight 90-minute online sessions across the year, two a term, plus a full Practice Day in Term 3. One place per school, so the room stays cross-school, with peer triads holding the work in between. Four deliverables to take back: a wellbeing system map and gap analysis, a staff touchpoint review, a tier map and leadership rhythm, and a costed plan for next year.
$4,500 per place, per year · ex GST
Peer learning is the thing wellbeing leaders most consistently say they lack, and it is the one thing a one-to-one partnership structurally cannot provide.
One-to-one Practice
For schools needing bespoke support. Bands describe intensity, not a fixed session count, and configuration is agreed in the proposal and reviewed each term.
A single wellbeing leader or small team$7,500
Shared wellbeing leadership across a team$9,500
Larger or complex schools, with senior leadership engagement and onsite planningFrom $14,500
Per year, ex GST. Where a school runs Practice alongside a Build partnership, the plan is Practice Advisory Support, because Build already includes leadership alignment, team sessions and an operating rhythm.
Not included in a Build partnership
- Therapy, counselling, clinical supervision, student case management or crisis response
- Unlimited day-to-day coordination of the placement
- Guaranteed university supply or student availability
- Staffing or recruitment brokerage
- Legal, industrial, medical or clinical governance advice
- Ongoing Operating Partnership access, which begins as a separate annual layer
Next step
Every partnership starts with a conversation.
STEP will not quote a level without one, because until we understand your readiness we would only be guessing. The Review is Stage One, and it carries across in full.