11 Comments

I didn’t know they were a charity. Perhaps we should be petitioning the government to fund them as an essential health service instead of . . . this.

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Totally. Personally I’d love to see wraparound and CONNECTED care from pregnancy right through to 18. Ministry of health + ministry of education working together with midwives, Karatane nurses, plunket nurses, paeds, dentists, speech & language, early intervention therapists, physio, teachers, principals, SENCOs etc. sigh. The dream eh?

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That would be amazing! Then things might not get missed and children fall through the gaps. But also the burden of sharing the knowledge of your child isn't the parents responsibility, coz I've found it super hard to explain a medical condition that I have barely got my head around to the multiple other people that need to know about it and then what to do about it, and the keeping everyone updated as well. And everyone working together with out having to fight for it in the first place.

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Yes! In the early days with my girl, we didn't even have a diagnosis, just a bunch of symptoms, and trying to explain it all to everyone and keep all the right people in a loop that I didn't fully understand was exhausting! And yeah, the fight for treatment and coverage . . . whew.

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Totally agree with you both!

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Oh Lorde yes. I have a high needs child and wooooow what if people actually *talked* to each other?! Revolutionary. Can you imagine the weight lifted off each whanau if proper wraparound services existed? To know their tamariki were going to be looked after would be awesome. Ah, we can dream.

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For the life of me I can't understand why it's so difficult to connect services in the public sector!

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Yes better comms by Plunket might have prevented this turning into a vehicle for anti government and racist rants on social media.

The Ministry of Health commissioned a report into the Tamariki Ora Well Child Service and it is available to read on the website - published late last year. Interesting reading and they are definitely trying to get more equity into the system. They talk about codesigning a new model of delivery - which given the dates stated they must be doing now.

Plunket themselves did a consultation using codesign principles with staff, whaanau and others a couple of years ago. What happened to that I don’t know.

Whatever is install for the service it needs to have some universal aspects and some that are more targeted and funded better.

We have something pretty unique here in NZ and are the envy of many overseas even though it is far from perfect. I hope we can improve on it and reduce the current inequities.

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Absolutely- totally agree.

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Such a shame Plunket didn't front-foot the messaging around this before their staff on the ground began implementing changes. Suspect I live in the same small town as the person who started the petition (they posted it to a local parents FB group) and wonder if they may have had a similar experience to mine. Our 2 year checkup was meant to be this week, I'd asked to reschedule and received this txt back: "I've been meaning to call you as I have to cancel M's appointment. I've just been informed this week that the Plunket schedule has been changed. We are no longer doing checks from 6 months old unless you have concerns with your child. Reason for this change is Plunket is trying to create equality for Maori/Pacific island high needs babies. But please contact me if you have any concerns you can contact me at any time or Plunketline."

All good, I love Plunket! It was unexpected though, and felt an abrupt end to our Plunket journey. I went to their website to find out more but there was no information about any service changes. I wasn't quite sure what the next steps were now that our visits had been stopped, was I supposed to be doing anything in it's place? Or not worry about it? I don't agree with the petition at all, but I can understand how this situation has led to confusion and knee-jerk reactions.

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I agree. This is what happens when there’s an information vacuum eh? I absolutely think it should have been handled better and all of this would have been avoided ❤️

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