Kia ora,

I often get asked about the funding for the Access and Choice programme and how that’s working. It’s a five-year programme and our current focus is on gearing up as quickly as possible so we can get services into communities that will make a difference to people’s lives. However, over time how we work in terms of investing money will change. I wanted to share a little about what you can expect over the next few months as well as the outlook for 2021 onwards.

I’ve shared many updates on progress being made on the Request for Proposal (RFP) processes. To date we’ve held RFP processes for Integrated Primary and Community mental health and addiction services as well as replicating and expanding Māori and Pacific services. These RFP processes are progressing and we expect the outcomes of these to be shared in the New Year.

We will also be running procurement processes for new Māori and new Pacific services as well as an RFP for youth services in the New Year. 

We ran a series of Māori Hui in September and October this year.  We committed to having an external Māori lens look over the feedback to develop the key themes that will inform the procurement process for new services.  We are also underway with running a series of Pacific fono/workshops and the outcome of these will inform the Pacific RFP. 

Some of you may know that we were expecting to have the youth focused RFP open before Christmas.  We teamed up with the Ministry of Youth Development to get feedback from the youth community to understand what is important to take into account when developing new services. We are expecting to get the outcomes from this engagement this month. The feedback from this will inform the RFP specifications which will now be released in the New Year.

These RFP processes will help us with allocation of early funds in the Access and Choice programme and increase services in regions that are ready given that we are unable to start rolling out services everywhere at the same time.  Services are expected to start between February and June next year for the first phase and between July 2020 and July 2021 for the second phase.

Following these RFP processes, the Ministry will work with key stakeholders in each area to provide implementation support to rollout new services in a phased approach and ensure that all services are connected and seamless for people needing support.

Ngā mihi nui,
Robyn Shearer
Deputy Director-General, Mental Health & Addiction.