Fears for social workers among mentally ill
Emergency accommodation is being used as a dumping ground for people with serious mental health and other issues — and a lack of information sharing is placing support workers and other clients at risk, social agencies say.
Nga¯i Te Rangi social worker Patrick Mitchell, who has 20 years of experience in the field, says in his view, motels and transitional housing have become a refuge for some people who would have been in specialised community care in the past.
Mental health history is also often withheld by the Ministry of Social Development under the Privacy Act and getting consent can be difficult, he claimed.
“People are suffering from the impact of the housing crisis. “The problem has been exasperated by Covid.”
Nga¯i Te Rangi has a transitional housing apartment block that can accommodate up to 33 people including families, and also works with about 17 people living in motels.
“One of the drawbacks we are seeing is clients are coming to us and we are not getting the necessary information regarding their health issues. MSD is not forthcoming in this department . . . they throw the Privacy Act in our face.”
Mitchell said they used to meet people who had been referred to their services in person but procedures had changed for safety reasons. I don’t want my staff to get injured or hurt . . . So there is that concern for us as providers but our other overarching concern is if we don’t take them, who will?”
The iwi provider now met with ministry case managers and clients so they could decide what information they wanted to disclose.
Nga¯i Te Rangi senior social worker Trish Britton felt it was important support agencies knew the criminal history of potential clients — particularly around child sex abuse.
“We are not a mental health unit and we are not supposed to look after someone until they die if they are seriously ill.”
Knowing in advance if someone was unable to climb stairs or needed additional health support made sense.
At the moment it was up to the clients how much information they disclosed to the iwi via a consent form.
Te Tuinga Whanau Support Services executive director Tommy Wilson said it had a filter system “so we know before we accept those marginal, potential clients”.
However, Wilson said Tauranga’s motels were becoming a “dumping ground”.
“We know there’s 95 homeless people living on the streets [with] . . . intensive mental health issues. We haven’t got the capacity or qualified staff to even start looking after them.”
Ministry of Social Development housing group general manager Karen Hocking said its priority was to make sure people with an immediate housing need, who would otherwise be homeless, had somewhere to stay regardless of their past.
“Information . . . disclosed to us by our clients is shared with public housing providers. Our clients sign a housing consent form to allow this, but we can only disclose what is shared with us by our clients.”
“If someone tells us they don’t feel safe, we will work with them to identify alternative accommodation, if available, and encourage them to report any criminal activity.