Greens call for more public information on new services

Green Party MP Kevin Hague today called on Te Ara Mahi and Richmond Fellowship to give the public more information about the services they will be providing on the Coast for people who have experienced mental illness.

"I know these organisations have been talking with those people who will be directly affected by the change in services. But the services provided by Coast Care Trust for people who have experienced mental illness have been highly valued by the wider community, and the public deserves to know more and have some certainty about the services that will replace them."

Mr Hague said it would also be helpful for the wider community to have more clarity from Coast Care Trust about the future role of its Activities Centres. The decision by the West Coast DHB to fund different organisations to provide services for people who had experienced mental illness did not affect the funding Coast Care Trust received to provide its Activities Centre services for people with physical and intellectual disabilities, he said.

"Coast Care Trust needs to reassure the public that the Activities Centres will continue to provide services for people with disabilities, and to also spell out whether or not it intends to continue to provide a drop-in service for people who had experienced mental illness who wish to use it.

"My understanding is that the funding the Trust receives from the Ministry of Social Development is sufficiently flexible to permit the Trust to do this, and clearly this would be valued by the community."

Mr Hague reiterated his earlier comments that the needs of service users needed to be paramount for everybody involved – directly or indirectly – in the situation, and said that greater public certainty about how services would work in the future would help achieve this.