Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Wellington City Mission has received a funding boost to extend the staffed hours of its in-house cafe and offer around-the-clock support to people in mental distress.
Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey visited the mission's base, Whakamaru, on Tuesday morning to announce $500,000 from the government's Mental Health and Addiction Community Sector Innovation Fund.
This would be matched dollar for dollar with money raised by the mission itself, would allow its cafe to remain open and staffed with support workers 24-hours, four days a week.
Doocey said the idea was for it to function as a non-clinical alternative for people in mental distress when they needed support, and hopefully alleviate demand on emergency departments and the police.
"We want to make sure that when people are in distress, they can come into a safe environment, talk to someone who's been there themselves ... not to tell you what to do, but just to offer their story of hope and how they got through the difficult times."
It was one of six new, previously-announced Crisis Recovery Cafes set to be rolled out around the country over the next two years.
Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Four months after the new facility's opening, city missioner Murray Edridge said there were often queues out the door for the cafe, Craig and Gail's, with hundreds of people through each day.
"Some of them are people who traditionally would have come to the City Mission to have some of their needs seen to, or for people to assist them," he said.
"Other people are coming because it's just a cool cafe, and there's lovely food."
He said the current budget limited its opening hours, making it hard for people to get support after sundown anywhere other than the police, or an emergency department.
"The idea that we're not available all the time is problematic to me," Edridge said - and this funding boost would get them a little closer to around-the-clock open hours.
Sometimes all people needed, Edridge said, was to sit with someone who understood their issues, have something to eat, and make a plan.
Doocey said peer support workers were a "game changer" for mental health.
The announcement came alongside another milestone - Tuesday marked the start of a new peer support service in Wellington Hospital's emergency department (ED).
Support workers with lived experience would now be available talk to people presenting at the ED in mental distress, to provide comfort, as well as connect them with helpful community services outside the ED.
Having support workers in emergency departments was not new, Doocey said - but making people available who had experienced mental distress themselves and could support people in a peer-to-peer fashion was.
This service was already in place at Auckland and Middlemore hospitals, and would be at Christchurch and Waikato EDs in the coming months, as well as three further locations to be announced soon.
