In brief
- Kia Ora Ake receives about $12 million a year to provide mental health and wellbeing support across more than 180 Counties Manukau schools and settings.
- Roughly three quarters of provider staff are non-clinical, and Health NZ confirms they primarily deliver individual and small-group interventions.
- Health NZ says it holds no documented programme evaluation, complaint or incident report and declined to provide contracts and performance reports.
- Health NZ denies allegations raised by a verified source, including concerns arising after the only clinician the source encountered across several schools was present during an ERO visit.
The accountability records Health NZ could not readily produce
The government is spending millions on a school programme involving serious mental-health concerns, largely delivered by non-clinical workers, but cannot readily show how it is monitored or whether it works.
Health NZ-funded Kia Ora Ake is a roughly $12 million-a-year school-based mental health and wellbeing programme providing individual and small-group support to children across more than 180 Counties Manukau schools and educational settings.
Centrist asked Health NZ for contracts, performance reports, evaluations and related records showing what Kia Ora Ake providers were funded to deliver and how they were being monitored.
Health NZ declined under the Official Information Act, saying the material would require substantial collation and research.
Asked separately for outcome, complaint, incident and evaluation records, Health NZ said it held no documented Kia Ora Ake evaluation, complaint or incident report, despite the sensitive mental-health and safeguarding work involved.
Yet Kia Ora Ake’s own public information said in October 2025 that the service was considering evaluative work and would be included in a national evaluation programme running from 2022 to 2026.
Nearly four years into that period, Health NZ said it held no documented evaluation of Kia Ora Ake.
Non-clinical staff handling serious cases
Health NZ’s funding records show about 76 per cent of Kia Ora Ake provider staff are non-clinical, and Health NZ confirmed those workers primarily deliver the programme’s individual and small-group interventions.
“Small group and individual interventions are primarily delivered by non-clinical staff and, where appropriate, clinical staff may also be involved,” Health NZ’s Maria Wederell told Centrist.
There is no contractual requirement for a specified number of clinical staff to be present at a school at any particular time.
Clinicians are instead available within provider teams for escalation, consultation and support as required.
According to a professional source whose identity and background Centrist has verified, non-clinical workers are dealing with children presenting with serious mental health and safeguarding concerns.
“On the referral form they ask for information regarding suicidal ideation, self-harm, trauma,” the source said.
The source told Centrist they knew of non-clinical workers dealing with children presenting with trauma, suicidal ideation and self-harm.
“They may say they triage kids, this child wasn’t flagged for being self-harm, etcetera, but how do you know from a piece of paper?” the source said. “Perhaps behind what’s written on an assessment are serious issues. But you don’t know till you’re client-facing.”
The source said one-to-one work can also produce unexpected disclosures involving abuse or child safety.
“A trained person knows how to handle disclosure such as ‘so-and-so hurts me’,” the source said. “An unqualified person may jeopardise what may become a complicated legal matter with inappropriate questioning and handling of information.”
One provider’s job description for a non-clinical kaimanaaki role requires a Level 4 or equivalent qualification and can include individual and group work with children and contributing to the management of clinical risk.
Health NZ says providers use “trained non-clinical staff” and clinical support is available when required. But when Centrist asked whether parents are specifically told whether the person working directly with their child is a registered health professional or a non-health professional, Health NZ did not say that they are.
The source argues remote clinical advice is not the same as having a clinician directly conducting therapeutic work.
“If that clinical therapist is not face to face, attuning and adjusting to the child’s needs, then this is a health programme or initiative,” the source said. “It is not individual clinical therapy.”
The clinician appeared when ERO did
The same source told Centrist they had observed Kia Ora Ake programmes across several schools without a clinically trained person onsite providing supervision.
“Across three schools, I have observed programmes being delivered by untrained providers with no clinically trained person on site providing supervision,” the source said.
“On only one occasion did I meet a clinically trained social worker, and this was on a day [the Education Review Office] was visiting.”
That led the source to suspect clinical staff may be moved between schools or rostered to attend when ERO visits take place.
Health NZ rejected the allegations.
“The allegations you have raised are false,” Wederell said.
Health NZ also stressed that ERO does not govern, oversee or audit Kia Ora Ake.
Centrist has not alleged that ERO audits the programme. The concern raised is whether staffing arrangements change when ERO is visiting a school.
Asked directly whether clinicians are moved or rostered to schools to coincide with ERO visits, and whether staffing, rostering or supervision arrangements are ever changed because of an ERO visit, Health NZ did not specifically answer those questions beyond rejecting the allegations.
Health NZ said individual providers keep rosters showing which staff attended each school, when they attended and what service they delivered.
Those records could test whether clinical staff were unusually present during ERO visits. Health NZ did not say whether it had checked the rosters before declaring the allegations false.
Activity without clear evidence of effectiveness
Health NZ recorded about 8,200 Kia Ora Ake sessions in 2025, including individual and small-group therapeutic support.
But fewer than half of the children included in its combined individual and small-group outcome data had both a before-and-after wellbeing score.
Among those who did, more than half did record a positive change, while nearly a third recorded a negative change.
Re-published from the Centrist with permission
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