Update The PHO Mental Health team have had a busy time over recent weeks with high numbers of referrals for mental health support. We hope the new referral and funding processes have simplified things at Practices making the pathway to access appropriate support easier for all. We experienced a surge of referrals on the 1st of July, as if the previous funding allocation was still in place, please refer people as they present to prevent these surges which cause issues in capacity and timely care. Our Group programme has struggled over recent months, with Covid and winter illnesses impacting people’s willingness and ability to meet together. Due to this we have paused all group workshops at this time as we could not get enough attendees to facilitate a group. We will look at group workshops resuming as soon as we have interest from our community in attending. Please continue to refer people and we will explore appropriate options for support and education with them. Please be mindful that we have no increase in funding, so our resources are stretched. We need to prioritise care to those who have not accessed talking therapies previously and link people in with alternative funding pathways where we can. Remember your Health Improvement Practitioner is your first port of call in supporting your patients and will refer on to our service also if required. Following is information and links to the service that supports those on MSD benefits and alternative options for general and grief counselling available in Tauranga. The Ministry of Social Development now have a resource for counselling that anyone who is a MSD client on a Work and Income benefit can self-refer to, offering individual phone counselling, people can book session times to suit, with sessions offered from 9 am to 9 pm 7 days a week, multiple languages are available. Please use this resource in the first instance for clients supported by MSD.
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