Monthly update, April 2018 Posted by Posted by Linda Skates on 30 April 2018 Posted on: 30 April 2018

Kia ora tātou,

I am really excited to be able to talk to you now that we have got decisions on starting the new transformed system in MidCentral. Hopefully by now you have had a chance to see what Ministers said when they made the announcement and to read all of the new information that is there.

We have got summaries of the Cabinet paper and the Cabinet papers, and we have Frequently Asked Questions and a lot more information you might want to read, including the press release from Ministers.

Some of the key things that I wanted to highlight in terms of what’s in the announcements, is that we will be starting in MidCentral on the 1^st of October, 2018.

For people who are in MidCentral, I just want to assure you that the support you receive on the 30^th of September will continue to be the support that you receive on the 1^st of October. There will be no changes for you unless you come to us saying that you would like to make a change or at the time we get to a regular review point.

The other thing you might have seen in the announcements is that there will be two teams. For a long time we have heard there is a real need to keep the Connector role, an ally who can walk alongside disabled people and families, separate from funding decisions.  And so we have got two teams that we will be trying out in the prototype - one that will be about the front face and connecting with disabled people and families and one that will have all of the back office type functions supporting Connectors to work with disabled people and families. But that doesn’t mean you have to have a Connector either, it’s an option for all people and you don’t have to take it up.

So while we have been busy working on announcements and really excited about being able to tell you this, the rest of the team have been working on lots of other things as well. We have been working on developing the funding allocation and process and tools, and I know that a lot of people are interested in what we are doing in this area. The first phase of information is now out for virtual testing and if anybody would like to be part of that testing, please contact us at STfeedback@moh.govt.nz .

The other thing is that there is now, on the government electronic tender system, a Request for Proposal out to try and find people who want to do the baseline data gathering for us in MidCentral. So before we start, we want to understand, What are the experiences now for disabled people and whānau? What’s happening for providers and also the workforce? And to understand what processes are in place and what people’s experiences are? What are the outcomes that are being achieved before we start the transformed system? So we can look back and see what has changed and whether that has worked out better or not for disabled people and families.

The final thing is that it’s really important that we start communicating more to you about what it will mean for you, whether you are a disabled person, a whānau member, a provider, part of the workforce, a government agency official or someone in an existing NASC. So we will be starting live streaming sessions. They will be open to everybody but will be focussed on different groups, so one for disabled people, one for whānau, initially one for providers, but we are also looking at the potential for having separate ones around different types of provider groups. We will be getting out to you so you have plenty of notice about when those sessions will be happening.

Once again, I would like to thank everyone who has been involved in getting us to this stage. A lot of work went into developing the high level and detailed design and a lot of that work came from you, disabled people, whānau members, providers, workforce, the NASC people involved and also people from Disability Support Services and other government agencies. So thank you and congratulations on getting to this point. 

Sacha O'Dea

System Transformation lead