Monthly Update, May 2018 Posted by Posted by Loren Savage on 31 May 2018 Posted on: 31 May 2018

Hello everyone,

 It’s been a very busy month for the System Transformation team. We kicked off livestreaming. We had three sessions for disabled people, whānau and providers. Two went really well, we had a small technical hitch with the whānau one, which is why we are going to kick off with whānau first for the next set of livestreaming sessions. We will let you know about them at least two weeks before hand, but we will be kicking them off from mid-June.

The other thing that we’ve been really busy working on is getting ready to start recruitment for the new two teams in MidCentral. So, it’s a really exciting milestone that we have now advertised the two new Director roles. So that is the Director for the Disabled People and Whānau Supporting Team, and the Director for the System Enabling Team. Those are the two first roles that we want to get on board.  We will be starting to advertise for all the other roles within the system, from the middle of June. So you can start looking out for those ads as well and please, we are really looking for fabulous people from across the sector who have the right skills but we are particularly looking for disabled people and people with experience of being whānau of a disabled person to apply. So just encourage people to look at that.

The other things we have been really focused on over the last month is thinking about the governance group and the selection process for the governance group in MidCentral.  And so we are going to get feedback from the MidCentral Regional Leadership Group, but we are also getting approval from Ministers over the next few weeks for that process and we will be kicking that off at the beginning of July.

We have also been reviewing all of our provider contracts and looking at what we are going to do in terms of making changes to contracts and what that timeframe will be, when are we going to go out for new contracts etc. and we will be communicating to providers about that from the beginning of June.

Finally, we have been thinking about communications up to the first of October and we have been looking at the way we have been communicating to date. We know that [for] people in MidCentral, disabled people and families, we need to start doing more communication about exactly what it will mean for you -start off with the kind of introductory messages and as we get closer to the time, more detailed messages about who to contact and what it will look like for you. We are thinking about that, not just as a generic way of communicating with everybody but thinking about what different groups need. And so we will be looking at, in particular, what we need to put in place for people with learning disabilities and we will be contacting people about what are the opportunities to engage. But we are also looking at what we need to put in place for different groups: people who come from a Te Ao Māori perspective, Pacific people. What do we need to do to develop concepts in a way that works for the Deaf, rather than it being a translation from English into New Zealand Sign Language.

So now is the time to start waiting for us to start communicating with you about what is going to happen. We are really committed to trying to provide feedback and communication in a way that works for different groups of people across the community. There will also be face to face opportunities and the live streaming opportunities. 

So thank you to everybody who has been working with us over the last month and we look forward to getting your questions in the live streaming sessions this month.