Part 1 Indigenous innovation: Creating conditions for change, movement building and collective impact.

Healthy Families Whanganui Rangitīkei Ruapehu is a rōpū of social innovators and indigenous systems thinkers working to encourage a united effort for better health and wellbeing outcomes. We are a part of a large-scale initiative, Healthy Families NZ, that brings community and community leadership together to improve people’s health and wellbeing where they live, learn, work and play. We care about community-led innovation and systems wide prevention solutions with an explicit focus on equity, improving health for Māori, and reducing inequities for groups at increased risk of preventable chronic disease.

Taking a community approach to complex issues within systems acknowledges that the most effective and sustainable solutions to health and wellbeing challenges are best driven by the people who are most affected.

Social Innovation, conditions for change, movement building and collective impact.

We are the wellbeing movement, courageous in our collective efforts to reduce suicide and crisis in our region, and increase the wellbeing of our people. Ensuring that vulnerable people live well in our communities, that communities have increased protective factors and that professional sectors have increased understanding of how to reduce the compounded weight of risk factors. We are able to amplify and accelerate our impact through stakeholders and community by working together across the wellbeing spectrum and the continuum of support.

The 6 conditions for change are central to the mahi of the Growing Collective Wellbeing regional suicide prevention plan and the mental health and addiction redesign. This is incorporated by attempting to shift the current mental models of stakeholders and community towards thinking about the kaupapa and why it is important for the community to see suicide, mental health and addiction in a different, less stigmatised way by openly discussing its impact on people.

Growing Collective Wellbeing – Regional Suicide Prevention Plan

In 2019 Healthy Families Whanganui, Ruapehu, Rangitīkei was commissioned to facilitate the co-design of a whole of community, whole of system approach to the regional suicide prevention strategy and action plan. At Healthy Families Whanganui, Ruapehu, Rangitīkei we foster an innovative mind-set, where we are adamant that people are the experts of their own solutions, this is consistent with the mātāpono (principles) of rangatiratanga. As a result of working with community champions and experts we agreed to flip the narrative from suicide prevention to enquiring how we (as a region) grow individual and collective wellbeing.

11 Phase One initiatives were identified as the traction plan and several of these phase one initiatives of the Growing Collective Wellbeing Traction Plan have generated momentum and demonstrated how we grow system and community capability and transform current capacity to impact change.

MH&AOD Collaborative Redesign

In 2021 Te Whatu Ora Whanganui commissioned Healthy Families Whanganui, Ruapehu, Rangitīkei

to facilitate the redesign of community Mental Health and Addiction service delivery for the Whanganui rohe.

The overarching objectives for the Collaborative Design initiative is to:

Transform existing mental health and addiction services to be a connected ecosystem which meets the needs of our community, supports, protects and improves collective wellbeing, and is shaped by the communities’ experience of what works.
Build capability and capacity for better and faster change across the whole mental health and addiction service delivery system in the Whanganui rohe.

We know that in order to be more effective and accelerate success we will need to transform and change our approach to the delivery of Mental Health and Addiction services across the rohe (region), through shared understanding and ownership of the highest priority changes needed for rapid action across the life continuum.