Alliance Health: Advocating for a safer community

Alliance Health Plus is on a mission. Established in 2010 as the only Pacifi c-led Primary Health organisation in New Zealand, its goal is to make the community safer for everyone.

To achieve this, it offers an inclusive model that covers a wide range of providers with different needs, goals and aspirations covering a range of demographic groups.

It is now expanding its role and function within health and community services, particularly in the areas of health service integration, and inter-sectoral integration, where it will infl uence the social and economics conditions that benefi t all population groups in an initiative that will improve the working lives of clinicians and their ability to better meet the needs of the population it serves.

Last Sunday evening at the EFKS church in Grey Lynn, one of this social conditions of health was rolled out to the Samoan congregation in a move that Alliance Health Plus hoped will benefi t the Pacific islands community.

This time it's about Family Violence, an initiative facilitated by the Community Parish worker of Alliance Health Plus, To'o Vaega, and presented by Sergeant Martin Auva'a of the Avondale Police Family Safety Unit, aimed at reaching out to the communities – in their own languages, the nuances of family violence laws and application to the different environments; from the New Zealand perspective as against how it was administered back in the islands.

“I work with the elderly people of our community in 14 churches around Auckland, in a program called Healthy Village Action Zone for the 60 plus age-group every Thursday to help keep them stay active and keep a healthy life style,” said Vaega, the former Manu Samoa rugby international.

“Our faifeau saw the work Sergeant Martin Auva'a was doing with the family violence programme and invited him to speak to our people about the laws of family violence.

“We've heard the talk about family violence and how to avoid it – but we wanted someone to talk to us about the laws about Family Violence, and Martin is the right person to deliver the programme to our people in our language.

“Our family violence statistics is always in the news so hopefully this initiative will make our people understand the laws and avoid being in the news for the wrong reasons.”

Sergeant Martin Auva'a's experience on the subject and his fl uent in the Samoa language helped a lot with the interactions from the audience an indication that the delivery of the program, (in Samoan language) was the right way in order to for the message to reach a wider audience.

“I don't want you to think that we are alone in this,” said Sergeant Auva'a.

“We must stop the cycle of violence – what could be normal in our forefather's era is not right in today's era. It isn't Christian to be abusive so we can't deny we have a problem by seeking salvation in church. We must understand that what could be normal in our homes back in the islands don't necessarily work in New Zealand.

To understand the family violence laws is the beginning of our rehabilitation. It's the same message for every communities,” he said. “The challenge is to for our immigrant communities to understand and adapt to the family violence laws of New Zealand – threatening language or behaviour can land you in trouble.”

This Alliance Health Plus initiative is part of its wide range of services tailor-made to cater for the transformation of the Pacific communities health and well-beings in providing accessible, culturally responsive, quality health and social care by a profi cient and high-performing work-force – it's designed, along with a set of values, to build strong, healthy families and communities.