Te Whanau Kotahi making a positive change

Chairperson Paul Curry is excited about the new direction.

A Tauranga charitable trust that deals with people with disabilities is heading in a new positive direction.

Te Whanau Kotahi is a not for profit charitable trust that provides child development services.

The trust works on behalf of the Ministry of Health in the Tauranga/Western Bay of Plenty area providing help and support for families with a child that has a disability.

'The new service delivery model will be exciting move forward. The model will see us actively partnering with children experiencing disability and their families/whanau to support them in exploring what a life of value means for them and the ways they might achieve it,” says board chairperson Paul Curry.

The Te Whanau Kotahi's centre focus is on providing family centred support with a team of therapists who work with children and families in their usual surroundings such as home, park, swimming and pre-school. And is their goal to help those with disabilities to lead an ordinary life and be supported to take a full part in their community.

'We want to take the ‘dis' out of disabilities,” says Paul.

Within the recent years, the Te Whanau Kotahi charitable trust has experienced severe financial pressure and in 2017 the board of trustees agreed that the current service model was unsustainable financially, and it wasn't focused enough on early intervention for families.

The new service that will be rolled out within the next couple of months and will fully be in place in the new year, will aim the focus on the families and the early prevention that is needed for families within the first seven years.

'The waiting list for early prevention is 22 months, so we don't see how that is early prevention,” says Paul.

The dream for this new service is that after seven years or even before then, families will be able to handle situations in society by themselves and be able to feel like they got the help and support when they needed it.

'It'd be great to see parents get together and run tutorials with other parents so they can learn from their experiences,” says Paul.

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