Meaningful Health

28/08/2025

I had a lunchtime learning today about how to 'Recognise and respond to sexualised behaviour in rangatahi' through Whāraurau the national centre for workforce development for the infant, child, and adolescent mental health and addictions sector. This is the link to the resource behind the training. There are two more components to this training that are coming up so check it out if you are interested. I am really appreciative of these snack sized trainings that are so interesting and useful. I realised today that some of my resources from STOP where quite old (from my School Based Mental Heatlh Team days), great to see new energy in the conversations.

Helping professionals understand, recognise and respond to concerning sexual behaviour.

25/08/2025

Respite care, rehab and refuge are all lacking, says a Golden Bay nurse, therapist and teacher.

25/08/2025

I had a good yarn with Rebecca Greaves a writer for Farmers Weekly who is passionate about Rural wellbeing. I am hoping to connect her with Dr Julia Rucklidge and Merv Solly to discuss the relationship between soil, gut and brain health. We chatted about how Access Homecare was started by Rural Women NZ as an in home support for Rural mum's with new borns. It grew into a huge company and sadly was sold. One correction is that I don't think cancer treatment for young people can happen rurally. I think we need ruralcreate pathways with specialists like pediatric oncology psychologists. Rebecca wrote this with a broken hand after a rising accident. Tough lady.

Respite care, rehab and refuge are all lacking, says a Golden Bay nurse, therapist and teacher.

22/08/2025

I am working with a group of wāhine in Mohua Golden Bay to create a facilitated peer support grief group for young people. We have started a wisdom circle, so far there is Laura Manson is our local celebrant and funeral director, Aralyn Doiran a death doula and Artist, Beatrice Bourhis who is also an artist and a passionate community activator and me. This wisdom circle is a place for exploration, discussion & support for the project. I got the idea for this from Celine Donovan, an incredible Family Violence Educator in Canterbury. She forrmed a similar support group when she was considering setting up a project and I thought it was such a wise thing to do.

We recently have the support of Jerri Saraullo a vibrant young teacher from Melbourne who is in the Bay for a few weeks. Jerri is helping create the training for volunteers and brining her experience and creativity for the structure and flow of the children's group.

We are going around the community and gathering ideas and advice from schools and other organisations that we can fold into this project. We have a couple of volunteers so far who will be trained to be facilitators, and we are looking for a few more.

If you have any ideas, advice or contribution, I would really appreciate hearing about it. This group is based on the Dougy Centre model of peer support. It's quite a different approach, so much to learn and adapt from the big city US model.

We decided to run it monthly as family's and volunteers have so much on. We will be documenting our progress and including some evaluation feedback in the hope that we may be able to share it with other communities.

Very early days but I will keep you posted. I'm looking at this photo and story that was in the paper this week and I can see how nervous I felt in the photo and I really appreciate Bea's strength. Bea had turned up to the interview with a basket filled with sourdough bread, butter and pumpkin soup and a daffodil and Jerri whom she had met and convinced to give us a hand.

On Thursday she turned up for our wee meeting with her basket a teapot filled with hot chai and honey and a slice of apple tart that Jerri had made. The process of getting an idea into reality is getting nourished in many ways.

15/05/2025

My hands can be a good reminder for my care. When I place them on my arms and give myself a squeezy hug I come into contact with the outline of my physical being, feeling the edge of my container. Stuff (thoughts, breath, feelings) comes in, up and out of my container and I observe that. My hand on the back of my head and the other on my forehead provides the most tender release, one on my chest and the other on my belly connects me to my heart and gut. I can use my fingers to follow my breath and count the things that are sustaining me.

15/05/2025

Today I am adding thermal cups and flasks to my list of what is helping to hold me. We brought a thermal cup this week. I am actually getting to finish hot drinks, and they are still deliciously warm to the end. Also a flask that keeps my lunch warm now that its edging into soup season. I did not realise how much these small things means to me. I'm a big fan of the cups of tea and have a few plungers and teapots plus dried herbs from our garden plus delicious chai, red bush tea and coffee that I make for my people and myself.

15/05/2025

I am partnering with my accomplished colleague Cath Finch, on a project to provide supervision for talented youth mentors from a stunning service in Auckland called Crescendo. Crescendo describe themselves as a purpose-driven social enterprise. who engage rangatahi (youth) through creativity to build positive pathways. Through their free music production and wellbeing programmes, they connect with youth from all walks of life, empowering them to reach their full potential.

Crescendo is a music production, recording studio, and social enterprise in Auckland. Audio Recording | Sound Design | Podcast Studio | Free Music Production Programmes

26/04/2025

If you have the time and this issue is important to you, please consider contributing your voice to the proposed model of care for paediatric palliative care in Aotearoa ***Closes the 2nd of May.
My contribution has included the challenges for rural families who travel distances for active treatment and then have no local palliative specialist care let alone paediatric palliative care. Care is often provided by local medical centers, district nurses and GPs who often do not have specialist knowledge and skills. Parents can have been through the trauma of fundraising for treatment for drugs that are not currently funded which impacts on their end-of-life choices for young people. There is little peer support currently for siblings in rural areas or counselling for the family. Palliative care teams are most often based in large cities and do not travel out to people. There is often no or no appropriate respite. It's an appalling situation. Any insight or experience you can offer this helps. Our children, adolescents, young adults and families are currently facing extreme inequity and dire circumstances particularly if they live rurally and remotely.

ThoughtExchange makes your voice heard on things that matter.

24/04/2025

Kia ora, I was at a training a few weeks ago, we got into pairs to take each other through this visualization. It appealed to me as I love the energetic space that art galleries can conjure up.
The lighting, the muted sounds and the space between myself and the art. It had been a busy day, so my thoughts were on the move, definitely some anxiety and old stories circulating around in my head. This exercise was quite soothing to me. I wondered if I could put the script into a shareable format, so I have tried to do it here. I have some others I would like to try if you think it is useful. Of course, my inner critic has told me how to do it so much better already!!🤣🤣 Useful Y/N? 🙏

19/04/2025

I am settling in at the Golden Bay Health Centre in Takaka on Thursdays. It's a sweet wee room with parking & amenities amongst a team of lovely colleagues. I'm still also working from Rockville and online with some flexibility for home visits.

Golden Bay Health Centre

5.0 ★ · Health consultant

19/04/2025

Story time for parents on a rainy long weekend. Relatable, even after 35 years of parenting. I raise my teacup to celebrate us all in our glorious mediocrity. https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1AbQzWznWH/

23/02/2025

Here is an upcoming local opportunity (Golden Bay) to understand risk and explore supportive strategies through the lens of a therapy called Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT). It is open to the community and is presented by clinicians from the USA.