Sunday (Day Four) January 22, 2012

I arrived at 3:10pm as scheduled at the Wellington International Airport. The customs agent was concerned about the camping gear I brought, so after a quick unpacking and inspection for exotic dirt and the bugs that can tag along, they could see my gear was clean and I was on my way. Gregg Fletcher my close friend and host for the next four months met me immediately after and Gregg took me downtown so I could make my initial meeting with Tony Littlejohns, Operations Manager for Capital & Coast Board of Health, and his assistant Sally. He has a modest office in the city, a walk up on the forth floor, close to the waterfront and government center. I excused my dogged appearance and he easily empathized as he has often done a similar flying route that is even five hours longer when he goes back to England. We agreed to meet again after I get settled in Otaki ( pronounced O-tech-ee) and figure out the train schedule and other travel logistics for commuting the hour and a quarter each way.
The view above is from the roof of Gregg and Carla's apartment on Cuba Street in the heart of Wellington. This apartment is now rented out to a special effects digital wizard who is working on the prequel to Aliens with a group of twelve other digital animators , and it is where I stayed for a while when I had my first visit fourteen years ago.
Capital and Coast is the the equivalent of our state mental health overseers but does a lot of what we do back home. My first visit to their community based services was spread over five days, near a small city called Porirua, a 45 minute drive outside the city where one of there major mental health hospital/ institutions had operated for more than a century and was torn down in the de-institutionalizing process that started in the late 60's and early 70's here. This current base is situated at the new Kenepuru Hospital, and that is where CATT, the Crisis and Assessment Treatment Team are as well as The APS hospital, the HBT or Home Based Treatment that is offered as the only alternative to what would be an IEA into APS. CATT is mainly staffed by nurses but also has a rotation of several psychiatrists. At least one psychiatrist goes out to the home with the rest of the CATT team to act as a consultant on these in home crisis assessments. They are fairly quick and the person being assessed usually has the choice of HBT or APS.
Capital and Coast has been using a new system this past year they call Te Haika which is a single point of access to all services from the catchment area they serve. Te haiku is able with state of the art technology to track all in coming calls and the calls are answered by a team of eight clinically trained people who make the initial screening to decide while that call is still live who in their 26 different service teams to refer them to AND place the first appointment. This system has reduced the wait times for first and second appointments by 58% just in the past year. Te Haika also catalogs all calls so they have been able to quantify all service needs in the community. They are able to track a great many bits of data within this system and it has made it possible to identify gaps in their services as well as areas that are underserved just to mention a few of the added benefits of having this single point of access to all their services.