Our Mission Statement
To support and enhance the wellbeing of families and whanau impacted by mental health issues.
Mental Health & Wellbeing Support is committed to supporting families and whānau who have a loved one experiencing mental health and/or addiction issues, dementia-related disorders, or challenging behaviour. We recognise that mental health challenges affect not only the individual but also the wider family/whānau, impacting emotional, physical, social, spiritual, and financial wellbeing.
We believe families and whānau play a vital role in recovery and wellness. Our aim is to strengthen the ability and resilience of families, whānau, and carers so they can support their loved ones while maintaining their own wellbeing. We provide a safe, respectful, and compassionate environment built on trust, honesty, empathy, and professionalism.
Our team offers empathetic, responsive support tailored to each family’s needs, including emotional support, education, advocacy, peer support, and practical strategies for coping, communication, problem-solving, and crisis planning. We also help families navigate the mental health system and reduce the stress, stigma, and confusion often associated with mental illness.
All staff bring personal lived experience of supporting a family/whānau member with mental health challenges, addiction, or dementia.
Mental Health & Wellbeing Support provides:
- Information about mental illness
- Education individually and as a group
- Support for all whose lives are affected by mental illness
- Advocacy in helping people to get more from services
- Public Education
- Regular Newsletters
- Peer Support Centre for all whose lives are affected by mental illness.
When receiving our services you have the right…….
- to be respected
- to have your confidentiality respected
- to have a safe environment
- to be taken seriously and to be heard
- to be free from discrimination based
- on ethnicity, religion, age and disability
- to withdraw from services or say “no”
- to be well informed about our organisation and about the way our service operates, and to be kept in touch with any new developments
- to be acknowledged
- to a service that is easily accessed, responsive and has a fair complaints procedure
- to provide feedback on support received and have input into service provision
- Schizophrenia
- Bipolar Disorder (Manic Depression)
- Depression
- Anxiety Disorders
- Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
- Eating Disorders
- Personality Disorders
- Dementia-Related Disorders
- Addiction
Helping our children
While many children who have a parent with mental health and/or addiction issues do well, these children are at increased risk of a number of poor health and social outcomes, including developing mental health and/or addiction issues themselves. A significant issue for many of these children is that they tend to take on higher levels of responsibility than is appropriate for their age, which can lead to normal everyday childhood developmental and social experiences being overlooked. This can have a range of consequences, including anxiety, isolation, low levels of health and emotional wellbeing, limited friendships, difficulties developing intimate relationships, low participation and achievement at school and in employment.
These risks can be reduced.
Research shows that early intervention and prevention strategies are effective in improving short and long term outcomes for this group of children. Mental Health and Wellbeing Support facilitates children’s groups, and individual youth support, which are designed to help support children and youth who have a family member with mental health and/or addiction issues.