What Comcare's Before Blue partnership does and does not change for PCBUs

On 2 September 2026, Comcare announced a partnership with Beyond Blue to make the Before Blue program available to Commonwealth employers. Before Blue is a structured coaching model, eight sessions over several weeks, and Comcare cited outcome figures of 92 per cent of participants reporting a mental health improvement and 98 per cent feeling heard and seen by their coach. The announcement ran the same day as Comcare's own Psychosocial Risk Management live learning workshop. A structured, outcome-tracked support pathway is a genuine improvement on an EAP phone number that few people use. For roles with sustained high emotional demand, offering a coaching option is a legitimate secondary control, and the fact a federal regulator is putting its name to a specific program is a useful signal about what "support" is expected to look like in practice. The distinction worth holding onto is where it sits in the hierarchy. Regulators have been consistent that the primary psychosocial duty is about changing the work, not equipping the worker to withstand it. A coaching program is a worker-facing control. It helps people who are already carrying the load; it does not reduce the load. If a risk assessment leans on Before Blue as the answer to a job-demands, job-control or role-clarity hazard, that is the same gap regulators keep flagging in guidance and audits. In a risk register, a program like this belongs as a named secondary control, recorded alongside the work-design control that is doing the primary job, with a note that consultation informed the choice. Documented that way, it strengthens the position. Documented as the main response to a design problem, it weakens it. Before Blue is a good addition to the toolkit for Commonwealth employers. It is not a substitute for the assessment that decides which hazards need the work itself to change.