NGO workforce development
Non-government workforce development is critical in order to provide great community-orientated services that are recovery-focused, person-centred, culturally appropriate and based in natural settings. This requires the sector to choose the most useful tools and practices that support the complexity and diversity of NGO mental health and addiction services.
New Zealand has one of the largest NGO mental health sectors in the world, with over 30 per cent of mental health funding directed to purchasing from this source. This sector sustains and provides daily community support through walking alongside service users and their support people in their every day reality of support and development. The NGO sector is considered by many New Zealanders as trustworthy and to have a vital role in the social and civil life of communities.
NGO workforce relationships with service users are focused on supporting and assisting the integration of service users with their community life. At its best, the NGO workforce also supports the aspirations of developing people, services and the sector.
On this page
Guiding documents
The challenge for Te Pou has been to find ways to engage with the sector through the guidance of the following documents.
- Te Tahuhu: Improving Mental Health 2005-2015: The second New Zealand health and addiction plan, Ministry of Health, 2005.
- Te Kokiri: The mental health and addiction action plan 2006-2015, Ministry of Health, 2006.
- Tauawhitia te Wero - Embracing the Challenge: National mental health and addiction workforce development plan 2006-2009, Ministry of Health, 2005.
- Te Awhiti - National Mental Health and Addictions Workforce Development Plan for and in support of Non-Government Organisations 2006-2009, Ministry of Health, 2006.
- NgOIT 2005 Landscape Survey, Te Pou, 2006.
- NgOIT 2007 Workforce Survey, Platform, 2007.
- Health Practitioner Competence Assurance Act and the Disability, Mental Health and Addiction NGO Sector, Platform, 2005.
Achievements to date
We have reflected and built on the valuable information from both the NgOIT 2005 Landscape and 2007 Workforce surveys, collaborated with Platform and focused on the following areas.
- Articulating a clear understanding of current sector work, its progress and future trends influencing the sector, with a focus on the support worker workforce - the largest evolving workforce in the NGO sector.
- Real time evaluation and feeding learning directly into service improvement. We have engaged the sector in training support workers to become action researchers, held a national evaluation summit and published a performance story report on the support workforce.
- Balancing relationships for initiating action within a complex sector, both instilling knowledge and empowering action as a result. This preliminary work has focused on the clinical workforce in NGOs. We have linked across workforce projects, and in 2007 two NGO-registered health professionals received scholarships to attend the Anne Garland CBT training workshop offered through Auckland University. The Te Pou nursing newsletter Handover profiles nurses working and practice within the NGO sector.
On the horizon
Te Pou will work with the regional workforce coordinators, and Platform to develop and broker relationships with DHBs and NGOs to support capability and capacity building in the clinical NGO sector.
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Page last updated: 10 February 2010