Setting Our Kids Up to Live Their Best Lives

CEO’s Report

We must focus on initiatives that achieve integrational change and secure long-term benefits for our community

I write this report on the back of two positive financial years that have drawn revenue to Kootuitui. I am, however, mindful of the current, more austere funding environment we now find ourselves in and the likely
impact this will have on our community. In response to this, trustees, staff, volunteers, and community members have recently completed our most ambitious three-year strategic plan. Of note, one key message
underpins the strategy: that we must focus on initiatives that achieve intergenerational change and secure long-term benefits for our community. During the last year, Kootuitui has continued to innovate by expanding our whaanau support services and creating a fourth Strand – Financial Wellbeing. In November 2023, we celebrated the opening of the Budgeting Office, strategically co-locating financial, educational, and social work
services to ensure wraparound support that provides more than a transactional budgeting experience.

Any Door is the Right Door

Kootuitui has adopted an “any door is the right door” approach to maximise service access and long-term impact. For example, if we treat a positive strep throat through our enhanced health services, our registered nurses (RNs) will send a priority referral to our Warm Dry
Homes team. Our schools can now refer students to our Whaanau Manaaki services that support student attendance and wellbeing.

Looking forward to the coming year, social and support work will be woven through all service offerings. Services such as nurses in schools, budgeting, and warm dry healthy homes, will have dedicated social work hours aligned with them to improve the collective wellbeing of the whaanau through advocacy and support.

Kootuitui Initiatives

Initiative

Partner/ Supporter

Overview of Initiative

Initiative

Partner/ Supporter

Overview of Initiative

I’m incredibly proud to be a part of the Kootuitui team. The brand Kootuitui is trusted and respected within our community. Our staff and volunteers live in and reflect the community they serve. Our team operates a non-judgemental, no-barrier, peer-to-peer approach designed to put whaanau at ease. This means we can engage at the grassroots level and maximise our impact. In our report, we have highlighted some of our longest-serving staff, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every member of the Kootuitui whaanau for your hard work, passion, commitment and unmitigated humour throughout the year. Thank you, too, to the Board of Trustees who go above and beyond to support Kootuitui and our community.

The future of our community needs to be one where there are no barriers to accessing healthy food and where no one is hungry. We need to encourage and foster a community approach that is strengths-based and help build knowledge, skills, access and connection, empowering whaanau to move from dependance to a place of resilience and security.

I’m very fortunate to be part of a team that shares this vision, a team deeply invested and passionate about the future of their community. I want to take this opportunity to thank each and every member of my team for their commitment and steadfast belief in Kootuitui and the community we serve.

To our Trustee’s we are privileged to have such an innovative and experienced Board, so invested in leveraging their experience, knowledge and networks to better the lives of tamariki and their whaanau growing up in Papakura.

To close a whakatauki that reflects our organisation’s intent for the year ahead:

‘He kai kei aku ringa’ – There is food at the end of my hands.

This whakatauki signifies resilience, empowerment and hope. It refers to one’s ability to use the skills and resources they have to create success. It’s about being responsible for the resources and capabilities one needs to grow and develop.

– Abi Bond

The Impact of The Pandemic

The average daily indoor temperature in the winter for most New Zealand houses is just 16°C. If house temperatures fall below 16°C, the risk of respiratory illness increases.
Children growing up in Papakura are three times more likely to live in cold damp mouldy living conditions.
Papakura residents are 33% less likely to own their own homes and twice as likely to live in overcrowded conditions.

Papakura East is in the highest 1% of Census areas for childhood hospitalisations potentially attributable to
housing.
Inequitable access to primary care – 46% of school-age children haven’t visited their GP in the last year.
Pacifika children are 75 times more likely to contract rheumatic fever – a disease that has been successfully eliminated in most first-world countries.

Students in South Auckland are twice as likely to leave school without any qualifications compared to the Auckland/New Zealand average.
In the Auckland region, approximately 7% of school leavers graduate with less
than their NCEA level 1; however, in South Auckland, the figure is 17.6%.
After the 2021 lockdown in NCEA, achievement rates for high decile schools remained static or improved conversely, achievement rates in Papakura declined
significantly.