Addiction services are often working daily with the families and whānau of people affected by addiction. In the last few years however mental health and addiction services have been asked to make a paradigm shift in the way they offer mental health and addiction support to ensure more effective engagement and support for family, whānau and the children of the people they work with.

Supporting Parents Healthy Children (SPHC) was launched by the Ministry of Health in 2015. The guidelines outline expectations (primarily for adult mental health and addiction services) and recommendations to increase family and whānau participation in services, with a particular focus on parenting and earlier intervention for children of parents with mental health and or addiction issues.

In addition, the Substance Addiction (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) (SACAT) Act has now made its way through the parliamentary process and has Royal Assent. The new Act has clear requirements for addiction staff and services to involve and inform family and whānau throughout the legislative process. Services will also have obligations to family members when people do not meet the high threshold for compulsory assessment and treatment.

The 5-Step Method is grounded in rigorous research and has a clear theoretical model which underpins the intervention. It gives a structured way to work with family members and is both simple and effective. The model sees family members as people needing support for themselves in their own right, rather than solely supporters for family and whānau with substance or gambling problems.

Implementation

Matua Raḵi  are implementing a rigorous training, accreditation and evaluation process of the 5 Step-Method here in Aotearoa New Zealand. This implementation process will be quite different from other trainings we have offered in the past and includes;

  • Training and accrediting addiction practitioners in the 5-Step Method.
  • Training these accredited 5-Step practitioners to deliver training to other practitioners in the 5-Step Method, and accrediting them as trainers.
  • Training practitioners to become accredited assessors.
  • An ongoing process for cultural adaptation
  • Evaluation of the effectiveness of the model in the Aotearoa New Zealand context.

This process means that New Zealand can develop a sustainable foundation for the use of the Method, maintain fidelity to the Method and know whether or not this Method works for us here in New Zealand.

In May Matua Raḵi  hosted Professor Richard and Gill Velleman from AFINet (Addiction and the Family International Network) for the initial 5-Step Method practitioner training. We had 17 trainees from around the country who participated across the 3-day training. These trainees are now undergoing the accreditation process.

Early in 2018 the Vellemans will return to train these accredited practitioners to become trainers in the 5-Step Method. After this time, the training will become more widely available around the country, as the New Zealand based trainers begin to train their peers and colleagues in the sector.

For more information about the 5 Step-method implementations please contact anna.nelson@matuaraki.org.nz

Foot note: The 5-Step Method implementation is one of the initiatives that Matua Raki is involved with in relation to this work. For further information about Supporting Parents Healthy Children.