Marae-based residential care for Wanganui's ageing Maori population will be one of the topics that focus groups will be looking at as part of an investigation by district health boards across the central region.
The focus groups have been set up to look at whether changes within society are leaving Maori and Pacific people vulnerable and the Whanganui District Health Board is leading one of the groups.
Gilbert Taurua, director of Maori health for the Whanganui District Health Board, said very few Maori and Pacific residents lived in rest homes, traditionally instead living with their families.
"But families are struggling to care for their elders due to economic and employment pressures,'' Mr Taurua told the Chronicle.
He said another concern was the ever-growing demand for health services for Maori over the age of 50 who had poorer health outcomes and a higher burden of chronic illness than non-Maori of the same age.
"The number of older Maori and Pacific peoples in our community is expected to rise significantly over the next 15 years with a projected increase of 115 per cent in the proportion of Maori aged 65 years and over and more than 125 per cent in the proportion of Pacific peoples aged 65 and over.
"And this is happening against a background where demand for aged care residential care services in the central region is expected to exceed capacity from 2014, and the cost of providing long-term care for those with chronic illnesses is increasingly putting pressure on the health dollar,'' Mr Taurua said.
He said the growing number of aging Maori and Pacific peoples was part of a wider dilemma facing health providers.
"This isn't just a problem impacting on Maori and Pacific Islanders but it does throw up some specific issues,'' Mr Taurua said.
He said marae-based residential care was an area that would be explored by the focus groups.
"Kaumatua housing projects are already up and running in some other parts of the country and it's definitely an issue to be considered by the groups,'' he said.
Mr Taurua said it was not just about providing full-time care for the aged but rather finding a place for them to live but letting them retain as much of their independence as possible,
"It could be something like a housing area for about six to 10 people who could live independently while retaining a sense of community.''
But he said there were some positives as well.
"Maori families, for example, tend to bend over backwards to ensure that their kaumatua aren't put into aged care, preferring to look after themselves as much as they can.''
The first focus group would meet in Ohakune on November 25 with other meetings scheduled in Palmerston North, Levin and Wellington.
"My job is to capture those rural areas first but there is already pressure on to take them to the metropolitan areas as well,'' Mr Taurua said.
Some of the questions would look at whether rest homes needed to adapt to meet the physical and spiritual needs of elderly Maori and Pacific residents and if there were other options that elders might prefer.
"Older adults, no matter what their ethnicity, need to be encouraged to live independently within their community.
"The models of care that promote and maintain healthy ageing, manage chronic conditions, and reduce reliance on hospital based services has never been more important,'' Mr Taurua said. Two of the four focus groups will seek the views of Maori and the other two, the views of Pacific peoples.
- Wanganui Chronicle
