John Tamihere says it is logical that a major funding boost to Whānau Ora in the May 2021 Budget must follow if the glowing references Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has regularly espoused is anything to go by.

The Prime Minister has held up Whānau Ora and the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency model as a great success for services delivered to Māori by Māori.

“Whānau Ora was mentioned on a number of occasions in the speech from the throne to kick off the new parliament,” Tamihere said as he addressed around 60 Kaiarahi – from as far as Huakina Trust in Pukekohe through to Te Ha Oranga in Dargaville - who gathered in Auckland for whakawhānaungatanga. “On that basis, we anticipate our movement being rewarded in this May budget.”

He told the Hui that they were the new face of the digital workforce because they could support whānau with health, welfare, education, housing and justice issues.

“You are no longer constrained by silo set ups of the industrial age and are the new workforce of the digital age,” Tamihere said. “The work you undertake is internationally bench marked by Social Value Impact modelling.

“Never before has such a comprehensive professional programme ever been developed by an indigenous people in the world, but above all things, on all measures is deeply successful.

“We have also developed our own workforce competency programme called the Whānau Ora Diploma. We are also the only provider group in Aotearoa that has designed a fit for purpose info metrics system which our whānau are part of in terms of their journeys to a better place.”

So good is the programme it was now being deployed in America, via Atlanta Georgia’s Family First, an African American service provider and also by a pilot programme with the Federal Government of the US, by way of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to five Native American tribes.

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