The Immigration department will try to protect the mental health of its officials with "resilience training" for public servants working in Australia's network of detention centres and other places where they witness "trauma" and "tragedy".
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The department wants private sector providers to bid for the contract to train up to 1000 Immigration and Border Force officials each year, helping them to cope with the things they see in the detention centres and other areas of the departments.
One refugee advocate said the fact that the department was planning to train its officers to be resilient to trauma was a "damning" indictment on Australia's immigration detention regime.
According to the tender documents, the training will be aimed at " those who work with objectionable material or witness vicarious trauma such as staff in client services, detention centres, investigations, border operations, and health services roles amongst other areas.
"Additionally, staff in roles related to the above may have incidental or accidental exposure, and training solutions should seek to support these staff also.
"DIBP defines "resilience" as the process of adapting well at times of high demand when an individual's coping resources may be stretched and adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress."
The documents also show that the merger between the old Customs agency and Immigration and the creation of the Border Force operation is taking its toll on some of its 13,500-strong workforce.
"The pace and scope of this change, in addition to complex and high profile work of the Department, continues to place pressures on staff," the tender documents state.
Immigration's latest figures show workers' compensation claims from its employees for mental stress had more than doubled between 2014-2015 and the past financial year, from six to 13.
The numbers are low compared to claims for trips, slips, falls and "body stressing" which together generated more than 100 claims in 2015-2016, but the increasing instance of psychological claims is in contrast to a diminishing number in the broader Australian Public Service.
The department says it already provided psychological assessments and self-care support programmes for its staff working overseas and in on-shore and off-shore detention centres and counselling was available for staff and interpreters working in the camps and centres.
But Asylum Seeker Resource Centre chief executive Kon Karapanagiotidis says he and his colleagues have seen much "vicarious trauma" among Immigration public servants.
"It's really quite damning when the department has to start training its staff in resilience," Mr Karapanagiotidis said.
"Even as a lawyer stepping into a detention centre, just for day, you come out shaken and distressed and what you see with departmental staff is significant vicarious trauma.
"They're sitting there watching people suffering, self-harming, suffering depression, taking their own lives and going on hunger strike.
"So if the staff need this training, people who work there, they don't live there, so if they're not coping what are these places doing to the people who are imprisoned there."
