| Rauaroha Segar House is a totally unique, nationally recognised mental health facility for some of Aotearoa’s most complex mental health patients.
But right now Te Toka Tumai – the Auckland part of Te Whatu Ora – have proposed to close the service by withdrawing funding. Segar House has been delivering expert treatment to mental health patients with nowhere else to go for half a century. Despite its record of life-changing care, we’re expecting a decision to be made on the centre’s future on 11 July. We know that the people of Tāmaki Makaurau value mental healthcare, as well as the whānau Segar House care for, who have experienced severe trauma and live with complex mental health conditions. |
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| What’s special about Segar House is that they work with people to discover what kind of therapy – or therapies – work for them. Amongst their staff are psychologists, psychotherapists, an art therapist, and a psychiatrist.They use the whole environment – physical space, relationships, and group social interactions to support whānau care.
People who come to Segar House for have usually tried everything else in the public health system. This is the service that stops whānau getting left to the streets or imprisoned. Te Toka Tumai’s proposal to close the service is under consideration right now. That’s why it’s so important to show them community support for this service right now. Will you sign the petition? |
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| This proposal is one of scarcity – Te Toka Tumai are considering closing the service because it’s small. But here’s the thing – Segar House clinicians want to see more people and have asked Te Toka Tumai to widen their referral rules to enable more people through the service doors.
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These workers are passionate about their mahi, and the people in their care. They know that there’s nothing else out there like Segar House that can meet the needs of their clients. And they want more people in Tāmaki to experience this support. After pressure from the clinical team last year, Segar House even trialled working with Primary Care Liaison teams to drop the barrier for admission. They had good results with an increase in clients getting access to their intensive treatment. That’s why we’re calling on Te Toka Tumai to abandon the plans to disestablish Segar House, and for the Government to support this leading facility at a national level. We’ve heard the final decision on whether Rauaroha Segar House will keep getting funded will be made in the first week of July – just two weeks from now. Segar House PSA members will deliver this petition to Mike Shepherd – Te Whatu Ora’s Group Director of Operations for Te Toka Tumai District. By showing community support for the service, we can add to the chorus of voices calling to keep the service. Please demonstrate your support by signing our petition. Ngā mihi, The PSA P.S. Check out some of the media coverage of this issue:
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Of all the shitty things this Government has done, this may well be the worst…
Auckland intensive mental health service proposed to close
The proposed closure of an intensive mental health service is “insulting nonsense”, according to one advocate, and news to the minister in charge, who found out on the day The Post put in a request for comment.
Te Whatu Ora – Health NZ proposed earlier this month to close Segar House ‒ its Auckland-based tertiary level specialist psychotherapy service ‒ and redistribute the services and funding.
Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey had not been told of the proposal until Thursday.
In the change document, which was leaked to psychotherapist, broadcaster and former Segar employee Kyle MacDonald, it proposes to disestablish the programme, re-invest the resources into community mental health teams and redeploy staff.
“It’s insulting nonsense,“ MacDonald said. ”Frankly, I think it’s going to put people’s lives at risk.“
…Segar House is one of the very few jewels in the crown of our mental health service.
I have known people whose lives and wellbeing were only achievable in a specialist centre like Segar, what is being proposed here is to smash the last remaining crown jewel so that Te Whatu Ora can sprinkle that smashed jewel as far and wide as possible because of intense budget and hiring pressures.
That the Minister was even aware of the decision is shameful.
I think this is a terrible, terrible, terrible decision that will cost far more money and damage many, many, many lives.
Segar House is one of only 2 centres like this, the other is in Dunedin.
It is a programme that helps the most damaged in society learn to live in the community!
These are people with enormous mental health issues and problems, if they are not in Segar House they are losing it in public and either damaging themselves or others.
You see their cost explode in ACC, the Police call outs, the ambulance call outs, the hospital costs and the judiciary costs!
Segar House is one of the few silver bullets we have, it desperately needs to be expanded NOT SHUT DOWN!
The argument that these desperately broken mental health patients will be somehow magically saved in the community by splitting Segar House up and spreading the specialists around is a fucking joke! These patients have ended up at Segar House because the Community can’t help them!
These patients will immediately choke up the crisis services and that will simply metastasise negatively in a. billion different ways.
Shutting Segar House is an obscenity of an idea, and it must be opposed at every step.
Labour, the Greens and the Māori Party must all make an immediate statement that they will rescind this decision and immediately seek to re-establish a far larger Segar House
This is a terrible, terrible, terrible idea.
Our mental health infrastructure is pitiful and crumbling, destroying one of the few things that works is an obscenity and we need to stand with the weakest amongst us and tell National NO!
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NO it is easier just to throw them out on the street and save the government money ,just like ACT want everyone to take up smoking and die sooner ,fiscal Heroes they are according to Seymour .Much better to spend the money on tax cuts for land lords and ute drivers along with 20% tax rebates for new tractors and utes for business and farmers .Just think how much tax and spending would be generated if the government had built those 35000 homes .The Peacock subdivision in Hamilton is only going ahead now because the last government invested $38 million in pipes etc through kIANGA ORA .
Excellent piece by John O’Connor, but as he says
“Whatever the outcome for Segar House, and I urge all who are able, to fight for its survival, I fear that the threat to this unique clinical service is reflective of a wider political ethos, in which the most disadvantaged in our society are the first to be further left behind, as we prioritise the myth of ‘free’-market economic productivity, at the cost of human lives.”
So is it about saving Segar House, or is it about saving all aspects of society from this menace that fronts us. John is the sort of person we should be listening too and who’s advice we should build society around.
Not the pond scum like Simoen, Seymour or the old fart sac himself.
I can’t take part in this submission as I live in the Nelson region which the PSA or something has not deigned to include in its Maori units of NZAO. I do not live in Tasman or Marlborough. Does the organiser know where he or she lives or has it washed away in the last flood and is now on the seabed somewhere off shore? This is a form gathered together by AI perhaps.
Quality Community Care. I’m surprised that Segar House lasted this long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rWQazwG10c
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