Home and Community Health Association

09/09/2026

Mauri Ora – Home and Community Support – the Heart of Care HCHA Forum starts in 6 days, and we are excited to welcome everyone who has registered.

🔊Mauri Ora – Home and Community Support – the Heart of Care HCHA Forum
📆Wednesday 16th September 2026
⌚8.30am-4.15pm (Please note registration starts from 8am and the Forum starts promptly at 8.30am)
🏢Location: ICON Room, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, 55 Cable St, Te Aro, Wellington, 6011
🚶‍♀️🚲🚌🚗How to get to Te Papa: https://www.tepapa.govt.nz/visit/plan-your-visit/getting-here

If you have any queries relating to your booking, please contact: [email protected]

07/09/2026

Integrated and cohesive health planning that is long term, was a key discussion topic at the fantastic BusinessNZ 2026 Election Health Forum.

We appreciated the shift toward discussing the wider picture of health prevention, diagnosis and treatment (hauora in its fullest sense) and the balanced, interdependent solutions this kind of thinking can offer, if we act on it. Homecare is at the heart ❤️

Thank you to Minter Ellison Rudd Watts for hosting

07/09/2026

Better access to aged care needs to stay on the agenda leading into the election. This week Australian State Health Ministers are pushing back hard on their Federal Government, with close to 3,500 people stuck in hospital beds and a shocking 100,000 people waiting for Support at Home packages in Australia. It's a warning sign for any system, including ours, that when aged care capacity doesn't keep pace, the pressure doesn't disappear, it just moves downstream onto hospitals, families and the workforce carrying it all. This is such a critical part of the longer term picture, economically and morally. The question remains, what kind of health system do you want for your care? One that is holistic, that reflects manaakitanga at its core?

We all deserve care that is person centered and easily accessible or do we just watch, do nothing and know crisis awaits. These questions need to be held strong.

Health Ministers across Australia are calling for the Federal Government to do more on aged care.

When older Australians are medically ready to leave hospital but can’t access an aged care place or the support they need, it puts pressure on hospitals right across the country.

WA is investing in initiatives to help people transition out of hospital safely, but this is a national issue that needs stronger Federal action.

Every State and Territory wants the same thing - better access to aged care and home supports, so older Australians can get the right care in the right place.

31/08/2026

'A healthy nation is a wealthy nation' is a term that is so right I had to share it thanks to Mark Robinson.

Primary care, hospital-level care and residential care are all supported by a hidden first line of defence, home-based care, the beating heart of the healthcare system: vital, invisible and under pressure.

The aged care report highlights the urgent need for long-term solutions, not ones impacted by political cycles or preferences, but grounded in the reality of demand and delivery, and the moral weight of dignity and duty. The interconnection of health and wellbeing is well appreciated, yet the jump many find tough is the link to economic stability for Aotearoa. But that's a fact.

Homecare is provided by many not-for-profit and private organisations, giving people care and choices where most prefer it, at home, at a fraction of the cost of $2000 a night in hospital. Under the current system, as detailed by the report's Chair, David Cunliffe, aged care costs alone will rise from $2.5 billion to nearly $5 billion by 2037/38. If the system is redesigned with a boost for homecare, it saves $835 million a year. Who delivers that care needs some thought too.

We need urgent action, yes, and perhaps a reminder that those older people will include me and you(if we are lucky), and we deserve to have a say in the picture we will all have to live with. So what kind of health and social care system do you want?

Casey Costello MPSimeon Brown MP Dr Ayesha Verrall Chris Hipkins MP Scott Simpson MP Huhana Melanie Lyndon Lawrence Xu-NanSam Uffindell MP

Recommendations from a Ministerial Advisory Group include increased in-home care, a workforce strategy, and national pathway for people in the aged care sy

30/08/2026

This last week has brought stormy skies and devastating news for some of our faith based providers in the Auckland region, who have been told that they have lost their home and community support contracts. This affects around 4500 older and disabled clients, along with the kaiāwhina who have built years of trust and relationship with them.

We still need more clarity from Health NZ on next steps and how the transition will be managed. What is already clear is the significance of this change, and we look forward to understanding what the next steps will be for everyone involved.

As the sector continues to change, we hope that community rooted, not for profit values are not lost in the process. We welcome more discussion with Health NZ.

Our aroha goes out to the providers, their kaiāwhina, and the whānau at this challenging time.🙏

24/08/2026

Now we have a clear direction with recommended investment in home care - to stabilise and then build on wider advanced models of prevention. The reality will need workforce to be a central component and that will need clear planning.
This is the time for action for improved aged care.

For too long, governments have kept kicking the aged care can down the road. This Government appointed the Ministerial Advisory Group because we want a proper aged care system that provides the right type of care in the right place.

The Government will now consider the report’s recommendations carefully before making any policy and funding decisions.

Read more here: https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/ministerial-advisory-groups-report-welcomed

23/08/2026

A comment from our CEO Lisa Foster:

Can we act now to help future generations of older people age with mana and dignity? Or does the immediate cost, rather than the future savings, stop progress again?

This question sits at the heart of an excellent article by Miriam Bell in The Post this weekend (see link in comments), which opens with a reflection of my own. When I first arrived in Aotearoa, the Royal Society was already warning that an aged care crisis was looming and that immediate action was needed. That was 21 years ago. The crisis has not been addressed, nor has it gone away, it has simply become more urgent.

As David Cunliffe, chair of the aged care ministerial advisory group, puts it plainly, the cost of providing additional care if we don't fix the system will nearly double to nearly $5 billion over the next 20 years, making it unsustainable for any government. Beyond the fiscal outcome, there is a tragic human cost and suffering that will impact countless souls. As an interconnected community, what impacts older people ripples across our entire society, and we all need to pay attention to this issue.

This report lays out practical, structural reform, guided by experts across the sector.

Bold action is needed, now is the time. Let's ensure this vital impetus doesn't get lost in the upcoming election mayhem.
Simeon Brown MP Casey Costello MP Dr Ayesha Verrall Huhana Melanie Lyndon

It’s been well-signalled that aged care is lurching towards a crisis, but a new report offers solutions. Here’s why it could be a game-changer.

21/08/2026

A major turnaround in Aged Care reform in Australia is being welcomed there today, and it's a timely reminder of what's at stake in getting implementation right from the start for Aged Care Reform.

830,000 older Australians will now have certainty of supportive services to keep them well in their own homes.

Minister for Aged Care and Seniors Sam Rae captured it well: "... keep people well and independent before they need more intensive support. There is a continuing role for that system and we are going to design it properly, with the people who deliver it and the people who use it."

Here in Aotearoa, with the recent release of the Aged Care Ministerial Advisory Group's "A Place to Grow Old" report, we're at our own crossroads. Home care, properly invested in, is prevention in practice; it keeps kaumātua well at home instead of in hospital beds that are already under real pressure from staffing shortages. This is detailed in the report via a more advanced 'in home' model.

The question Australia is now answering following a major crisis, is one we need to keep on all our political agenda's - and the fact that prevention needs wise investment has been playing out across the Tasman.

Casey Costello MP Simeon Brown MP Dr Ayesha Verrall Huhana Melanie Lyndon Sam Uffindell MPJenny Marcroft MP Carmel Sepuloni MP

The Commonwealth Home Support Program will be extended until mid-2029, redesigned, and kept separate from Support at Home, the government has announced.

18/08/2026

Investment in prevention pays, and this week's coverage of hospital capacity pressure is a reminder of what happens when the system waits for crisis rather than working to prevent it. Staff burnout, unmanageable wait times, targets that strain rather than support good care. The pattern is familiar, a story told and retold. But the final comments here offered real wisdom on the investment in prevention, pointing to the value of earlier detection of symptoms and more supportive action upstream.

Home and community care, as part of the wider health network, has a role to play here. It's often invisible yet operates as the hidden heartbeat of the health system.

The new Aged Care report from the Ministerial Advisory Group, A Place to Grow Old, released yesterday, makes a clear, evidence based case for early intervention, including home care, as a cost effective way to keep people well and out of crisis. This is not a new idea for those of us in the home and community health sector, but it is heartening to see it landing with bipartisan weight and a genuinely long term view. The facts on what happens in 10 or 20 years if we do nothing are sombering!

Surely we cannot deny the evidence; investment in prevention pays dividends. Simeon Brown MP Casey Costello MP Dr Ayesha Verrall Chris Hipkins MP

An emergency department doctor working in Palmerston North said he believes some decisions are being made to prioritise Government discharge targets over ideal healthcare. Government targets set a goal for hospitals to admit and discharge 95 percent of patients within six hours. The trend has been s...

17/08/2026

Today's release of 'A place to grow old: Securing the future of aged care' marks a genuinely significant moment for our home care sector.

It clarifies what the Home and Community Health Association has been advocating for since 1993, that in-home care is the heart of healthcare, the quiet heartbeat offering some of the most cost effective investment of every taxpayer dollar. Investment here can stop the hemorrhaging cost of more expensive, more intrusive options further down the line.

It's heartwarming to see this report take in the whole picture, laying out clearly what continuing on our current path will cost us against what's possible through real reform. And it recognises something too often overlooked, the humble, largely invisible workforce delivering increasingly complex care every day, including the family carers who hold our system together.

Rather than siloing the system into isolated measures like ED numbers or GP visits, it recognises that home and community care sits at the centre of a dignified resilient healthy system, not off to the side of it. Because that's the truth of it: fund care at home, and you fund the beating heart of the whole health system, now and into the future.

From the modelling it shows that a single night in rest home care can cost about the same as a week of home care. A single night in hospital can cost about the same as a month of home care. The logic really is that simple: pull the ambulance back to the top of the cliff, put real guardrails in place, and everyone benefits, older people, families, and the wider system alike. Partnering with other parts of the aged care sector such as residential care, primary care, NGOs like Dementia NZ, Carers NZ, Hospice NZ, iwi/hapū partners, and kaumātua/kuia as cultural guides and advisors is needed.

The modelling shows that structural reform could reduce direct costs to government by more than $830 million a year by 2037/38, in 2025 dollars, compared with simply pouring more funding into the current model, and this would need an investment or a net cost to government of $168 million. That's a strong return, and a clear signal that doing nothing is the most expensive choice of all.

There's more detail to work through, more reflection to be had, but the direction is clear, and it deserves genuine cross-party commitment to keep it on the Cabinet agenda. We're ready to work alongside anyone across the wider aged care sector who wants to make sure this reform delivers, for every part of the system, and for every older New Zealander who relies on it.
Casey Costello MP Chris Hipkins MP Simeon Brown MP Sam Uffindell MP Dr Ayesha Verrall

The Ministerial Advisory Group’s independent report on aged care provides valuable insights to help guide future policy and funding decisions, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello said today.