Te Ama Mental Health Services is a partnership between the Oamaru Pacific Island Trust (OPIT) and Te Hā o Maru Health and Social Services.
About 60 people including Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora acting manager Monique Gale attended the launch at the Brydone Hotel of the "inclusive" service supported by HNZ and available to all Waitaki residents.
OPIT chief executive Hana Fanene-Taiti said the organisations were thrilled to launch the initiative after an identified need for more support and resources for mental health in the district.
"We’re really excited to be delivering a service together based on Māori kaupapa and Pacific models of care that is inclusive for everybody," she said.
Te Hā o Maru Health and Social Services chief executive Mani Malloy-Sharplin said the collaboration and co-design of Te Ama Mental Health Services with OPIT had been "fantastic".
"Hana is amazing. We share the same cultural values and the same love for our community — that is what our passions are, so we stand side by side together," he said.
The results of the Southern District Health Board-commissioned Te Huruhanga Time for Change review in 2021 identified a lack of support in the mental health and addictions service delivery in Waitaki.
Ms Fanene-Taiti acknowledged the collective impact of Stronger Waitaki through the Waitaki Mental Health and Addictions network to raise awareness of the need.
She also acknowledged former Stronger Waitaki lead Helen Algar "who had been advocating for these type of services before 2021" which was how the review came to be.
"This is part of her legacy and we want to honour and acknowledge her for that," Ms Fanene-Taiti said.
As a result of the review, Stronger Waitaki, a community-led coalition of about 170 people from agencies and organisations in the Waitaki helped to lead a co-design process with the community and providers, to build on what Stronger Waitaki Mental Health and Addictions had developed, she said.
Nine workshops were held with providers, peers and lived experience support groups, the outcome of which was some resourcing provided by HNZ and a proposal request for a provider in the community to utilise the resource to help set up this new class of support service, Ms Fanene-Taiti said.
As of this year a Pre and Post Crisis Support and Navigation Services Working Group was developed in response to community needs and teams were established, Ms Fanene-Taiti said.
The working group will collaborate with frontline Te Ama team which includes Hannah Cruickshank (Pou Ama), Jacinta Te Maiharoa, Sonya Trusler, Saane Oakes-Hanipale (all Kai Ama), Sophia Sam (administration support) and medical director Dr Lily Fraser.
"One is a clinical role called Pou Ama, then there are two non-clinical roles, navigator, community practitioner, whanau support roles and what we have done between Te Ha o Maru and OPIT is combine a lot of our internal resources as well to help scale the service a bit,"
"In the first round of the proposal no-one put in, and that’s when Mani and I we had a chat and we both said we’re already delivering these type of navigator, holistic wellbeing support services for whanau and community, why don’t we put in what our current existing model of care is and how we could deliver that within both our teams," she said.
There was a need for a more whanau and holistic approach, more equitable and culturally responsive services, as well as a way to help support Māori, Pacific and the broader Waitaki community, Ms Fanene-Taiti said.
"Some of those key principles will be part of our new model of care," Ms Fanene-Taiti said.
Mr Malloy-Sharplin said they had known about the "gaps in the mental health" area for a long time and both groups looked at mental health differently.
"We don’t see it as a whole bunch of diagnoses and someone struggling, we see it as a very spiritual thing for Māori.
"We approach mental health a lot more holistically than clinically, so instead of working with the individual, we work a lot with the family, they’re the ones that need to hold this person up and support them.
"We look at all areas of the family and where it needs strengthening and we work in those areas," he said.
The project was in Phase 2 (implementation phase) with referrals for the service active from this week.
The test and pilot of all systems should be complete by the end of 2025, with all services expected to be fully operational by the end of January 2026, Ms Fanene-Taiti said.
