This week – Monday 3 November 2025, there was an interesting piece on RNZ’s Morning Report programme regarding the withdrawal of funding by ACC for clients with “approved” mental health issues to access the six-week Whakamatutu programme run by the Depression
Recovery Trust. ACC claims “the original aims (of the programme) were not fully achieved”.
Dame Diana Crossan – the chair of the Depression Recovery Trust, points out that despite regular meetings with ACC personnel there had been no expression of concern by ACC until they announced they were pulling their funding. Further, ACC had made NO referrals to the programme over the past nine months – clients for the programme had come from elsewhere.
An anticipated evaluation of the programme by AUT (initiated by ACC) has failed to eventuate and if ongoing funding cannot be found soon the programme will cease by Christmas.
But this is not what appeared to be exercising Dame Diana Crossan the most. The Depression Recovery Trust runs several programmes that have been developed in response to community need.
Most specifically, they have developed a programme to cater for people needing more than counselling services who have become frequent flyers at Emergency Departments because there is nowhere else to go. This programme has been developed following extensive consultation with all stakeholders in the mental health space. The building, services and clinical experts are all set up and Health NZ are now referring people, but despite two years of conversations, they (Health NZ) are yet to offer any financial assistance for this service which exists because they themselves have failed to respond to this very real need that has been well documented and widely known about for a lot longer than any of us care to admit.
This intensive crisis programme exists as an alternative to going to the ED or the hospital, so it enables rapid stabilisation, early discharge, and seamless stepdown care. In short it addresses critical bottlenecks in the New Zealand mental health system which include long wait times in EDs and delayed patient transfer.
Apparently, Health NZ has certain exemptions from the usual government tendering processes because it is recognised that the health space is different to most other tendering situations and therefore some ability to be flexible and agile is advantageous. Despite this neither Health NZ or its predecessor Whatu Ora have been able to find the humility or humanity to come to an arrangement with this provider who can offer a service that is very much needed.
How is it that two significant government agents can sit on their hands in the face of a very serious and well documented problem while an agency with a proven track record and an appetite can get off its arse to design and be prepared to deliver a service that responds to community need? Further how is it that Health NZ has spent two years talking about it but never getting around to providing any funding while ACC having provided funding, failed to refer it’s own clients for nine months, and worse failed notify any concern to the provider about their performance.
On Friday 31 October the Minister for Mental Health Matt Doocey claimed that “the government is focused on delivering faster access to support more frontline workers and a better crisis response”. I’d love to know which bits. It doesn’t seem that either Health NZ or ACC are with the programme yet.