He Waka Tapu
Who is He Waka Tapu?
He Waka Tapu is an organisation on a mission to innovate in how they provide support necessary for the communities they serve in Ōtepoti to reduce mental distress and improve their wellbeing. Having operated now for 22 years they are an established secondary healthcare provider and receive funding to provide their services predominantly to mātawaka, Māori communities who live in another iwi’s rohe, or area. While Kaupapa Māori, their doors are open to whomever comes through them seeking support.
He Waka Tapu are a non-western clinical space, following instead Te Tapa Wha, a Māori model for health, to design their services. Even so, they do collaborate with Casa, a western clinical advisory agency, if necessary to bring in extra support when dealing with complex needs. We talked with Rawiri Hazel from He Waka Tapu who tells us they try to collaborate as much as possible with other services to meet the needs of their whaiora. This co-operation with other services enables them to continue to focus on their own services while supporting whanau to have all their needs met. Rawiri acknowledges that there is a lot of innovation happening around the city and the country but that this leads to a lot of doubling up. He Waka Tapu are focused on not working in silo as an organization to avoid this.
He Waka Tapu are Invested in local people through grassroots innovation responsive to local populations. They work at a community level providing one-on-one support as well as group services to meet people’s needs to improve their wellbeing. This means that mild to moderate cases of mental distress can be engaged with quickly by them and more serious mental distress cases can be supported in getting further treatment options.
He Waka Tapu innovation:
Led by whanau voices and whanau needs their approach invests in co-design processes with their whaiora to then scope and seek funding sources that align to be able to provide those services. This is their major role, research, and development of whanau voice in co-design. They are all about not just relying on funding and commissions so also invest in community building initiatives that strengthen people individually and collectively and supports the organization’s goals. For example, connected network building invested in- eg service providing resource for men’s needs and for women's needs as a focus eg a helmet for someone to use to ride their bike to work, access to worker’s boots, or whatever is needed.
Rawiri contemplates over whether they might be the only NGO in the secondary healthcare sector in Ōtepoti doing this?
Housing, inflation, and quality of life challenges provide the conditions for mental distress in their communities. There is little separation between mental health outcomes, and someone is living experience of meeting basic living needs such as healthy food, healthy living environment and having opportunity in life. These basics for life when not being met equitably and with ease within an intergenerational reality set up the patterns and norms which minds must grapple, and often struggle, with. For many Māori whanau and communities these distressing norms cultivated through colonization are still imprinting themselves on their daily realities.
To support and change these realities with their whaiora He Waka Tapu continue in allowing themselves to innovate, adapt and change their services in relation to their communities’ voices. Rawiri works in suicide prevention for rangatahi which involves one-on-one check-ins. Through the Te Tapa Wha health model they assess where a rangatahi’s needs arent getting fulfilled and work with the rangatahi on individualised plans for working on their wellbeing and balance. So the support they provide is adaptive and responsive to the needs of each individual rangatahi whaiora.
What they are discovering from their co-design approach is that the positive impacts are rippling out further in their communities. An inspiring example Rawiri shared was a campaign they co-designed with rangatahi around them identifying if there is problemst with alcohol and drugs use in their commmunities, including their own rangatahi communities. They worked with rangatahi to research and develop their knowledge and then to co-design on some solutions and key messaging which they supported rangatahi to create and share via social media and through tik tok videos. The response they generated was so impactful the schools those rangatahi attended became aware of the campaign and the positive messaging that these rangatahi were creating. This spurred the schools to get involved sharing their message at school. For some of these rangatahi this opportunity changed how they were perceived at school by the staff and so a positive, wider community impact came about which gave confidence to the rangatahi.
The innovation does not stop there. He Waka Tapu also have small businesses developing within the organization to help with developing sustainability. They have been successfully developing Pao Ora, a community fun walk/fun run. They have grown it from a funded partnership to an independent event with the plan being to grow its popularity to then be able to charge a small registration fee. They have also started a café in their building which provides cheaper options for whaiora to enjoy eating out while providing a small revenue for the organization. Now they are working on building up a ‘park it market’ initiative, a community market for whanau and the wider community with the plan to grow it’s popularity so they be able to charge a small fee for stall holders in future.
He Waka Tapu focus on training up staff with lived experience. This ‘peer-led’ approach is akin to creating that essential ‘whanau’ atmosphere that builds a sense of safety and trust for whaiora to grow confidence in accessing healthcare, a confidence that has been eroded due to the racism and cultural bias many Māori have experienced when trying to access healthcare in their own country. Interestingly He Waka Tapu have alot of tane (male) kaimahi they have trained who they find moving away from more common work pathways. Rawiri himself was in scaffolding and truck driving before coming into suicide prevention work. That He Waka Tapu train people up in appropriate ways to grow success is yet another innovative way to have positive impact. These tane kaimahi make it less inhibiting for a lot of local tane Māori to receive support which is a great outcome as traditionally tane do not access health services for themselves. Rawiri thinks they might be servicing more tane then wāhine now which is a huge achievement.
In 2023 He Waka Tapu is expanding into other communities in Te Wai Pounamu, or the South Island, including Kaikoura. Rawiri shares the approach they take ‘we have to collaborate with who is already in the community, not come in and try and put their (He Waka Tapu) service in on top of what is there but be connected to what is there already. This supports relevance, impact, and sustainability.’ Respecting the mana and mauri of what is already existing and working together to co-design ways ahead is tikanga, but in health practices in this country such an approach is considered innovative. He Waka Tapu are reaching out increasingly beyond the borders of Ōtepoti to bring more hope and resources and events to smaller communities.
Mauri Ora is another successful programme they offer which is focused on substance abuse rehab. Rawiri shares ‘we see them come in one way and after 8 weeks' time, at the end of it, you can see the weight lifted off them and that they are a lot more equipped to go back to their lives or go into a different type of lifestyle that will benefit their mental wellbeing and health. You really see the transformation they go through.’
The innovation is in their approach; to be one-on-one, walking together meeting a need and then when the next one pops up meeting that and just walking alongside until the whaiora and the kaimahi feel the whaiora has enough skills and new supports to take hold of their own journey. They do not operate this service with the model of a limited number of sessions, they walk with the individual until they are ready to stand on their own.
This approach not only results in better outcomes for whaiora individually but also feeds openness that creates on-going community and connection. Whaiora will often come in to visit again in the future, bring their kids in and show them around, and drop by for a coffee. Or else they return to get involved and do training to then provide service to those coming in. This is the type of meaningful community connection that continues to provide good mental health support.
No referral is necessary to access this service either, you can be referred or can do a self-referral. They also have open community groups, so anyone from the community can come in for this service. This approach may sound so simple, yet the positive impact it creates around whether someone takes action to get support and improve their health or not is not to be overlooked. Especially when we are re-designing our whole health system currently to provide the conditions for this change in health outcomes for Māori. He Waka Tapu are ahead of the majority, and simply from being open and inclusive in receiving people when they are wanting support.
Co-designing their community groups means they are always open to trying new things and so their groups can be innovative, adaptive, responsive, and versatile. Even within their Mauri Ora programme Māori culture and Pākeha culture are not emphasized overtly, they focus more on wellbeing and mental health. This avoids assumption-based approaches to Māori people and service design and creates the necessary space that acknowledges that Māori whaiora are all different in where they are at culturally and some are not in a place where they are interested or ready to engage on those levels. This Kaupapa Māori organisation doesnt force anything on anyone. They focus on supporting whaiora to get engaged with their wellbeing and health as the focus, so they can get the most out of the services they offer.
Insights and Learnings
He Waka Tapu are innovative in encouraging an open-minded attitude and approach to meet the needs of their whaiora. Rawiri commented on the importance of diversity to open new ways of doing things, championing the approach of cultures learning from each other and understanding each other’s ways of living. This non-prescriptive cultural approach removes assumptions that can create unconscious bias and limit the impact they can have. Rawiri explains further ‘by being open to diversity in their own learning and practices they actively address bias in their own thinking and approaches, which they feel make them more effective and provide a good example for their whaiora to approach things more openly in their own lives.’ Understanding that each person has their own way of living and their own story that shapes them and their path they want to walk, He Waka Tapu’s role is not to fix whaiora, not to control their path but to guide and support whaiora on their path.
This is a 2-way process as Rawiri also acknowledges the importance of the work in Pākeha organisations in growing their cultural competency in understanding Māori and in being better at listening to Māori without judgement and bias. He sees the growing cultural engagement by Pākeha organisations is having a positive impact for whaiora as these organisations learn how to relate to Māori in mana-enhancing ways. This has the best outcomes for whaiora as they feel safe to engage and trust. In this way we do not necessarily need more Māori practitioners as much as we need more people engaged with Māori ways of being and doing. This is where the real collaboration lies, not in policy documents but in active practices that people feel authenticity. For example, even simply changing the workplace language and culture when engaging with different whanau creates an inclusive and open-minded cultural environment.
Such simple things really, I find it astounding that we need to spell these things out. But here we are in Aotearoa, NZ in 2023! Progressing, but are we even at a place of being able to innovate interculturally? Id says, in reflecting on the conversations being had and the behaviour's being identified in our workplaces we are still in the process of decolonizing, decolonizing from dominant and oppressive cultural norms that are still at play currently, even while we articulate our rising awareness of them. Just imagine what potentials and innovations might be possible when we arrive at biculturalism!
As we continue to evolve each other forward as a society, we take this moment to see and acknowledge and celebrate the leadership in innovating and making change that He Waka Tapu are progressing. They are grass roots and focused on establishing and building living connection to local people in their community and growing innovation from there WITH their local people. Innovation is based on whanau voices and needs as the starting point, not on academic theories. This is how Rawiri sees He Waka Tapu as being innovators.
