Our collaboration kaupapa is the key to everything we do.

Healthcare funders and providers can’t achieve equity alone. Health and wellbeing depend on many factors: income, job status, housing, education, social support, environment, behaviours, and access to care. Population health improvement and equity require coordinated local effort and aligned activities, priorities and service delivery across sectors. We need to look beyond our traditional remits to ones that weave together health and social care networks that respond to whānau aspirations and need.

We’re building partnerships of health and social care stakeholders across Tai Tokerau. Partnerships could take various forms. They could be formal agreements, with shared project plans and programmes of work; or informal, based on common interests.

Collaboration works. We’ve already seen the results we can achieve:

• We worked with primary care practices, Northland DHB, Comprehensive Care, iwi, NZ Police Northland Family Harm, Māori Health Providers, Ministry of Social Development, and Oranga Tamariki to deliver COVID-19 care in the community, supporting thousands of people to isolate safely at home.
• We’re a key player in the Kai Ora Fund, a collaboration of Tai Tokerau healthcare providers, social care organisations, and district councils that supports community-led projects to increase access to healthy, local, affordable food. The Fund has supported over 200 projects since it began in 2015.
• We’re a partner in developing He Kakano Ahau, a mental health and addiction service for young people that brings together taitamariki and whānau in our communities, Te Whatu Ora, Māori health providers, substance abuse and addiction services, and youth providers.
• We worked with our partners in the Northland Intersectoral Forum to develop an online platform to raise the voices of young people in Tai Tokerau.

Partnership building aligns well with the development of localities under the new health system. Localities and locality plans are key components of the new system. They are a place-based approach to improving the health of populations, as well as a mechanism for organising health and social services to meet the needs identified by whānau, community and mana whenua. Localities connect health care, support services, iwi and community organisations. In Tai Tokerau, we’re working closely with Kotui Hauora to support the development of the Muriwhenua locality.

We take a humble approach to supporting the system through our partnerships and networks. It’s not our role to lead, but to create the infrastructure and connections for networks to thrive, and to support them to achieve their goals. We can do this by:

• Serving the Iwi-Māori Partnership Boards and ‘mainstream’ providers to foster collaboration and integration for a Northland wellbeing ecosystem
• Facilitating joined-up working while enabling providers to retain independence and autonomy
• Providing clinical, planning and data intelligence support for the development, implementation and monitoring of plans and services
• Offering provider-neutral coordination functions that improve patient referral and care system
• Analysing network data to share understanding, context, and improve patient and whānau outcomes and experiences
• Taking on projects to develop and implement changes to achieve network goals
• Supporting advanced models of care design and implementation
• Advocating for localities and the needs of whānau and communities.

We aim for the partnerships we’re building to support the transition towards a stronger and more locally determined system that is driven by whānau voice. We can provide various levels of expertise (such as clinical, planning, data and insights) to support the development, implementation, and monitoring of plans and services at regional, district and locality levels.