The priority for addressing diversity of need focuses on promoting participation within society of five key groups of disabled people: Māori (objective 11), Pacific peoples (objective 12), children and young people (objective 13), women (objective 14) and the families and whānau and other providers of support to disabled people (objective 15). Central government agencies involved in addressing diversity of need issues include the Ministries of Health, Pacific Island Affairs, Women’ s Affairs, Social Development, and Te Puni Kokiri.

Māori

• Begun in 2002/03, the Māori Consumer Research Project: the Participation and Experience of Māori in the Health and Disability Sectors aims to provide information about Māori when accessing health and disability support services. This is a joint project between the Māori Health Directorate of the Ministry of Health, the Health Research Council and ACC.
• The Ministry of Health has provided funding for specific projects, such as the Northland Māori Deaf Project.
• Each year the Māori Provider Development Scheme, Ministry of Health, sets aside $300,000 to support disability initiatives. Recipients have included:
  • Hauora.com (a national Māori workforce group) to support two groups (Mana Turi (Māori Deaf) and Toi Te Huatahi (Māori Sign Language Interpreters)) to develop strategic and business plans.
  • Ngāti Kāpo o Aotearoa to develop a website, and other initiatives.
• ACC have developed a Māori Access Strategy, aimed at securing closer relationships with Māori communities, creating better awareness and access to ACC for Māori and offering improved services, responsive to the needs and aspirations of Māori.
• The Ministry of Health has developed a tool to predict the potential effects of government policy on the health of the Māori population.
• The Ministry of Health’s consumer consortiums include groups working specifically in the area of Māori wellbeing.
• The Ministry of Education has developed and implemented a Group Special Education Māori Strategy to ensure quality services to disabled Māori children and young people.

Pacific peoples

• The Ministry of Education’s Group Special Education Pasifika Action Plan continues to focus on building awareness and promoting access to quality services to Pasifika children and young people with disabilities.
• The Ministry of Health has established a Pacific Health and Disability Workforce Development Plan, the aims of which include improving outcomes for Pacific peoples.
• The Ministries of Health and of Pacific Island Affairs have worked jointly on addressing the knowledge gap and lack of awareness around Pacific disability issues.
• The Lu’i Ola Auckland Disability Plan, launched in April 2007, is a joint project between the Ministries of Health, Pacific Island Affairs, Education, Social Development (Work and Income, FACS, CYF), the Department of Building and Housing, ACC, the three Auckland Regional District Health Boards, City Councils and the Office for Disability Issues. The plan focuses on improving disability support services to disabled Pacific people and their families/whānau/aiga in the wider Auckland region. Disabled Pacific people and their families around Auckland were involved in developing the plan, and formally supported the end result.

Children and young people

• The Ministries of Social Development and Education have developed a cross-sector strategy aimed at putting in place a comprehensive system of early interventions for children, including disabled children, from pre-birth to transition to school. This is aimed at ensuring all children have the best start in life and are supported to reach their potential.
• The Ministry of Social Development and CCS Disability Action have jointly developed services for supporting parents with disabled children and young people involved with Child Youth and Family.
• The Best of Care review explores policy, legislation and operational practice related to disabled children and young people and their families and wha-nau who are involved with the Ministry of Social Development’s Child Youth and Family service and the disability services area of the Ministry of Health.

Women

• There has been inter-agency work on the experience of women with mental illness who, following family violence, have been denied access to women’s refuge centres.
• The Ministries of Women’s Affairs and Justice have done work to improve data collection on the victimisation of women with impairments.
• The Ministry of Health has done work on ensuring that Breast Screening and Cervical Screening Programmes are available and responsive to the needs of disabled women.

Family, whānau and other providers of support

• The Ministry of Social Development has done some work to Develop support services for disabled parents, including those with intellectual disability and those with mental illness, who are in contact with, or have children and young people involved with, Child Youth and Family.
• Since 2001, the Ministry of Health has provided additional funding to:
  • Increase funding for home-based support services (both Ministry and District Health Board funded).
  • Provide more respite services.
• In August 2006, the Government launched “Choices for Living, Caring and Working”, a ten-year plan of action to provide parents and carers with choices about how to balance their work and family commitments. The Ministry of Social Development is leading two key pieces of work under this strategy:
• The Ministry of Social Development, in partnership with the Carers Alliance, are developming a Carers’ Strategy, focused on family members and other informal carers who provide unpaid support for people who because of disability or age cannot manage everyday living without help. This has involved a public consultation and submission process.
• The Ministry of Social Developmentis developing a Five-Year Action Plan for Out of School Services. One of its key deliverables is to ensure that Out of School Services are reliable, at convenient locations and accessible to children with a disability and other special educational needs. A draft Five-Year Action Plan was released for public consultation in June 2007.

Scorecard for addressing diversity of need

The outcomes framework developed for this review has been used to measure progress in addressing the needs of disabled Māori, Pacific peoples, children and young people, women, and of their families, wha-nau and others providing ongoing support. The activities found relate primarily to increasing understanding, and these activities tended to involve disabled people and families/whānau/aiga. There was some activity on removing barriers, and limited activity was found that related to maximising opportunities.