Kia Kōrero
Let's Talk – February 2025

Kia ora koutou katoa – welcome to the Platform mental health and addiction NGO and community sector update for February 2025.

In this month's update, let's talk about...

• What's on my desk?
• Platform Members' Leadership Day 2025: Reshaping, Re-energising
• Our talks with Minister Doocey
• Showcasing the capabilities and strengths of mental health & addiction NGO and community providers
• Meeting the challenge: Practical Operational Responses for 2025 and Beyond
• Police Mental Health Change Programme
• Pay equity updates
• Details available of new workforce fund opening February 2025
• Exploring your organisations PRIMHD data
• Privacy responsibilities for organisations
• What we’re reading

What's on my desk?

Happy new year and welcome to our first newsletter for 2025. I hope many of you managed to get a well-earned break and are now back at work rested and refreshed.

During the last few weeks, the Government roared into gear with some changes to Ministerial portfolios within Cabinet. The changes which directly influence the health sector, the mental health and addiction sector, and public services, are a new Minister of Health, Hon Simeon Brown, Hon Matt Doocey having a sole focus on mental health, and Hon Judith Collin becoming Minister for Public Service.

Despite these changes, it will be important that we continue to focus on the policies which impact on population health and mental wellbeing. Changes in Ministerial portfolios do not immediately solve or address the issues and challenges which have bogged down the health sector, as Health NZ continues to have an inward focus. Financial and service performance continue to be a major focus for the health and social sectors.

We will reshape our approach to engage and put on the table the issues which need attention for our sector, such as contract certainty, pay equity for support workers, pay parity for other workforces, service improvement, and innovation. Importantly, we will take all opportunities available to us to inform Minister Doocey, and other Ministers and stakeholders, of the value and impact the sector collectively has on the functioning of a mental health and addiction system, and other parts of the health and social system.

We welcome your on-going support in the work we do collectively. There are many opportunities to engage and connect within the sector, through taking part in online Platform members’ forums, participating in our leadership day in March and connecting with regional Navigate Groups. It is only together we can show the impact our sector has on supporting tāngata whaiora and whānau in the community and contributing to achieving mental health and addiction targets and improved outcomes.

As always, please get in touch with Memo if you want to chat or learn how to support our kaupapa by becoming a member (contact details at the end of the newsletter).

Ngā mihi nui,

Sally and Memo

Platform Members' Leadership Day 2025:               Reshaping, Re-energising

Registrations now open  

Registrations are now open for the Platform Members’ Day 2025, with the theme of Reshaping, Re-energising, being held in Wellington on Thursday 27 March 2025. This event is a great way to reconnect and network with leaders on emerging system changes and opportunities in the mental health and addiction NGO and community sector. Minister Matt Doocey will be the keynote speaker. Stay tuned for more information on the exciting programme we are putting together.

Who is this event for?

Chief executives and senior managers from Platform member organisations working in the mental health and addiction NGO and community sector.

Places are limited.

Register now for this premier event. Details on how to register can be found here.

Other key details

• Date & time: Thursday 27 March 2025, 9 am - 4 pm
• Location: Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand, Wellington
• Cost: $175 per person + GST

Please note that Platform Members’ Day is the day after Addiction Leadership Day, hosted by NCAT, and two days after the NZ Drug Foundation summit, both if which are being hosted in Wellington.

Our talks with Minister Doocey

We have followed up with the Minister’s office and have secured a meeting mid-March. We are pushing for his commitment to have ongoing dialogue and engagement with Platform. This helps make sure the Minister has access to accurate and time relevant information about what is happening in the MH&A NGO sector, and the impact of decisions by Health New Zealand and other public sector agencies.

Showcasing the capabilities and strengths of mental health & addiction NGO and community providers

In the last few months of 2024, we put out an expression of interest seeking practice examples of innovative and collaborative MH&A service delivery by NGOs & community providers. The purpose was to gather information and data that will help us champion and showcase the capabilities of the MH&A NGOs and community sector.

We are thrilled with the response and interest shown. We received 55 responses to the expression of interest process. Thank you to all the organisations who responded. It took a mammoth effort to work through all the responses. The support you have shown and given us is truly tremendous, this work would not have been possible without it.

Our work on this project has progressed to the final stages. All things being equal, we are on course to share with you the final product during March 2025. Thanks to our amazing small project team of Phillipa and Abigail to get this work done.

Meeting the Challenge: Practical Operational Responses for 2025 and Beyond

In late December, Platform released a report to its members on practical operational responses to facing financial constraints and future funding changes. This report was prepared with assistance from experts at PwC and highlights the responses that MH&A NGO and community organisations can consider as they prepare to meet the challenges that the sector will certainly face in 2025 and beyond. If you are a member of Platform and did not receive the report, please email admin@platform.org.nz for a copy.

Later this week we will be releasing another report focusing on pay equity. This resource will help leaders understand the background and context of ongoing support worker pay equity claims.

Police Mental Health Change Programme

At the Platform members’ forum last November, we received an update from Health NZ representatives on the work happening to transition to a stronger mental health-led response for those requiring crisis mental distress support.  

We understand phase two of the transition process will start at the end of March. The main components are limiting police handover time in emergency departments to 60 minutes, and tightening custody rules to ensure people in distress are not being assessed unnecessarily in Police custody.

The MH&A NGO and Health NZ forum on police mental health change programme resumes this week. MH&A NGO leaders, alongside Platform, continue to work to ensure that there is a strong voice to influence any changes that will impact on mental health and addiction NGO providers and the support they provide to people and their engagement with Police. We will provide more updates as this programme develops further.

Pay equity claims update

Work to progress pay equity claims resumed during January. Generally, most of the work was sorting out logistics around upcoming key areas, as you will read under each pay equity claim section below.

Original care and support worker pay equity claim

There has been no progress or outcome on the work by Health New Zealand representatives to check and verify the data submitted by the 15 named employers in the original claims, and the additional 13 employers from the mental health and addiction sector. We are following this up with Health New Zealand.

Planning and preparation for the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) investigation meeting in May is progressing. The named employers, which include Pathways and Emerge, have agreed on the lawyers to represent them at the meeting. As we have reported in some of our previous updates, the unions applied to the ERA to fix the pay equity wage rates for care and support workers covered by the claim. This is as the parties were not able to progress to agreement at a mediation held in November 2024.

Efforts by the employer steering group representatives to engage with the lead funder Health New Zealand continue. However, this has become painfully slow further protracting the pay equity process.

Second support worker pay equity claim

The employer steering group and unions have progressed plans to complete a validation process of the support worker work assessment profile completed by the parties in the original claim. The validation process will be carried by support workers nominated by their employer to take part in either an in-person workshop or online workshop. These are planned to happen during late February or early March and will be facilitated by a union and employer representative. A manager survey is being prepared which will be used to assess the outcome of the validation workshops.

Next steps following the validation process are currently being worked out by the employer steering group and unions.

Third support worker pay equity claim

There are no MH&A NGO providers named in this claim. However, this claim is progressing by following the same approach and processes as claim two above. The intention remains to ensure that all the work across the three claims leads to an overall sector solution for pay equity for care and support workers and engagement, with Health New Zealand as lead funder.

Frontline managers/co-ordinators claim

The employer steering group and unions have an in person joint working group scheduled to take place during mid-February. At the workshop, it is planned to continue discussions to develop an agreed plan with timelines covering employee interviews, work assessment processes, comparators to be used to assess undervaluation, and quality assurance processes. Resourcing of the work needing to be done will also be on the agenda.

Employers also continue to be very concerned about the impact of pay relativity or differential and associated funding, which has been highlighted to the lead funder Health New Zealand and to Minister Doocey on numerous occasions.

Details available of new workforce fund opening February 2025

Details for a new fund for workforce development is now available here. The workforce Futures Fund | Tahua Rāngaimahi Anamata, will open in mid-February 2025 for applications to support initiatives in the following industries:

• Mental health and addiction support
• Aged support
• Cleaning 
• Disability support
• Home and community health services
• social services
• Urban pest management
• Youth work sectors

Applicants need to work in those industries or have strong support from sector bodies. $15m is available that will be spent down via two grant rounds each year over the next three years.

The fund's purpose is supporting innovation in workforce development and demonstrating the value of strategic investment. It will fund greater use of technology; collaboration across industries; and improved service delivery through:

• Vocational training, workforce development, and education
• Programmes, information and resources to promote best practice and continuous improvement.
• Attracting people to work in the sectors and workforce retention

It will prioritise applications that benefit:

• Māori
• Pacific
• Disabled People

Exploring your organisations PRIMHD data

If you work for a NGO or community service provider that holds a specialist mental health and addiction contract and reports into PRIMHD, you can access the PRIMHD data set through a secure website supported by Health New Zealand called Qlik. The data available through Qlik is a visual and analytic tool that can be useful to understand your organisation’s activities that you provide and what you report on. The dashboards include information about both NGO and Health New Zealand district mental health and addiction services.

So why could accessing this data be useful for you? It can help to understand why reporting data accurately is important. It can also support service improvements and better understanding of service journeys for tāngata whaiora and whānau. If you work for a mental health and addiction NGO or community service provider and would like access to Qlik, you can email the business intelligence team (businessintelligence@health.govt.nz) at Health New Zealand requesting access to the National Collections PRIMHD datasets available via Qlik.

Privacy responsibilities for organisations

Protecting personal information and data as an organisation is critical. In Aotearoa New Zealand, organisations must follow a set of rules as outlined in the Privacy Act when handling personal information. The Privacy Act protects individuals by defining how organisations:

• Collect personal information
• Hold personal information
• Use and disclose personal information 

In the health sector, the Health Information Privacy Code also guides how organisations should keep personal information safe and private. You can read here for more information on the Privacy Act and guidelines, and how to ensure that your organisation is protecting personal data.

You can also find more resources that support NGO and community providers to thrive here:

• CommunityNet Aotearoa
• NZ Navigator
• Digital Stuff We Love

What we're reading

Get in touch with the Platform team!

The Platform team is always available to interact with members on mental health and addiction NGO and community sector matters should you have any queries, concerns, or ideas. If you are interested in learning more about the benefits of being a Platform member and joining our collective voice, please don't hesitate to get in touch. 

Memo Musa (Chief Executive): Memo@platform.org.nz
Abigail Freeland (Policy Analyst): Abigail@platform.org.nz 
Kate Bell (Membership Engagement Coordinator): Kate@platform.org.nz
Natasha Snook (Membership Engagement Coordinator): Natasha@platform.org.nz