Methamphetamine and substance use seminar

Ko Janet Collier-Taniela taku ingoa, and I will be your host for the next 80 minutes or so as we explore insights and strategies that shape better outcomes for Tamaki and their whānau. Before we continue, I'd like to open with a karakia. Kia hora te marino ​ 

Kia whakapapa pounamu te moana ​ 

Hei huarahi ma tatou i te rangi nei ​ 

Aroha atu​ 

Aroha mai ​ 

Tatou i a tātou katoa ​ 

Hui ē​ 

Tāiki ē 

Just a few housekeeping reminders, we have an impressive number of attendees joining us today. Most are online and it's great to have you all here with us. This is a webinar event with a closed chat. If you have any further pātai please direct them to us and we will leave the link at the end of the seminar.

We are excited to present three thought provoking sessions that intersect insights, practice and community voice.

Our first presentation is by Doctor Thuong Nguyen. Thuong is a statistician with experience as a lecturer at Victoria University and in census methodology while at Statistics New Zealand.

At Oranga Tamariki she leads projects using the Integrated Data Infrastructure, applying advanced analytics, statistical modelling and machine learning to generate insights, inform policy and strategy for the wellbeing of children and young people. And I now hand over to you, kia ora Thuong.

Oh wow, thank you everybody.

Yes, kia ora, today I will talk about the prevalence of methamphetamine and substance use among parents of children in care.

It starts with the motivation of our work.

Since June 2024, waste water testing has indicated a sharp rise in meth use.

Meth consumption has doubled compared to the previous year.

So this increase has attracted a lot of attention.

Here are some of the screenshots from the media.

There has been lots of research done in understanding the nature of the rise from various government agencies.

One research has found, however, no evidence of a corresponding spike in meth related crime.

At Oranga Tamariki we have conducted 2 pieces of research.

The first one was on whether increased meth use is linked to reports of concerns, as around the same time last year reports of concern to Oranga Tamariki rose by over 60% on average.

Despite the rise in both, our research has not found a reliable connection between the two.

Meaning that changes in meth use do not consistently predict changes in reports of concern, either at national or regional level.

The other focus has been understanding meth and substance use among whānau of children in care, which I will discuss today.

Please note that our analysis is limited to biological parents based on data available in the IDI.

So for those unfamiliar, IDI stands for Integrated Data Infrastructure, a large research database maintained by Stats New Zealand, linking data from most government agencies to give a holistic view of people and the households in New Zealand.

Using IDI data, we calculated several measures on substance use treatment in general and a meth addiction treatment as well as meth related offences in particular. So we do produce each measures in two timeframes.

And you will hear.

Or see either a measure within the past year or during the child’s lifetime up to a certain time point.

Actually due to the IDI data being behind the latest time of

these reports is as at the beginning of 2024.

The graph here showed 2 measures as at January 2024.

On the left, the percentage of children with a parent who received substance use treatment in the past year.

And on the right percentage of children with a parent who had a meth related offence during the child's lifetime.

For both measures, children in care have much higher rates.

About 10 times higher than the general children population.

Specifically, 27.5% of children in care have a parent with substance use treatment, which is over 1/4.

And nearly 40% have a parent with meth related offence which is about one in seven.

So keeping in mind these are just proxy measures, we can only count those known to the health or justice system.

Then what about the trend?

The graphs here show a steady decline in parental substance use treatment.

And meth related offence from 2019-2024 echoing the long term drop seen in our Youth 2000 survey from 2010 to 2019.

So that is a clear declining trend.

But with the recent rise in meth consumption

it is unclear whether more people are using meth, each person is using more, or both of that has been happening.

We don't yet know if early 2024 marks the lowest point or if the rates will rise again afterwards.

IDI data is still catching up and more research is certainly planned.

What we do know, however, is that parental substance abuse, especially meth, puts children at greater risk of harm.

As you will hear more from our next presenters.

So meth impact on tamariki and whānau

remains a serious concern requiring collective and community led action.

Now we can look at how people access meth treatment through public health services.

Currently, there are 25 dedicated meth addiction treatment teams across the country.

It's clear system treats about 600 to 800 people.

Although this number is under count as many people might receive detoxification or meth related help from the general alcohol and other drug teams.

Due to the complexity of the issues

it's hard, however, to check how many of such cases.

As of January 2024 270 parents of about 250 children in care have accessed these services.

Nearly 40% of these parents had their first treatment before their child entering care.

And just over half of these parents had their first treatment between care episodes.

So this timing matters because it tells us when families are getting support.

But it's also raised an important question.

Are these struggling families really getting the support they need?

And is support actually making a difference?

That is why it's important to keep evaluating where possible.

And improving our services, especially our intervention and early prevention programmes.

By doing this, we can learn what works best to make sure families get the right help.

At the right time.

And ultimately support better outcomes for their whānau.

Let's look at the access to meth treatment in specific Oranga Tamariki care and protection regions.

So the dots you can see on the map represent where the 25 dedicated meth treatment teams located across the country.

A touch on each region as a percentages of children having a parent in meth treatment.

Blue numbers are for all children and red is for children in care in the region.

As we could see, Te Tai Tokerau stands out with 2% of our children and 20%, which is almost one in four children in care having a parent in meth treatment.

There are 6 dedicated teams in this region as part of the Te Ara Oranga Strategy programme.

So this programme was launched in 2016 to specifically reduce harm from methamphetamine for people in Northland.

In contrast these rates in East Coast are low, very likely due to no service in the region and very few services nearby.

Meanwhile, the rate of parental meth related crime in this region is relatively high, as we will see soon later.

So overall, these figures show significant gaps between regions in access to meth treatment.

This supports what we already know, that tackling meth use and related harm needs solutions that are not only evidence based, but also meet the specific needs of each region.

So let's look further into the mismatch between meth related offence and treatment across regions.

These two scatter plots show how 8 regions compared to the national average for two things, the rate of parent with meth offences and the rate of parents getting meth treatment.

It's not represent a reason.

The left plot is for all children and the right is for children in care.

The red straight lines we see show the national average.

If a dot is below the horizontal line, that region has a lower rate of parental meth related offence than average.

If it is left of the vertical line, that region has a lower rate of parents in meth treatment than average.

For all children, East Coast stands out

as it has high rate of meth related crime

but low rate of treatment, which we briefly mentioned in the previous slide.

Most other regions are either high or low on both.

Te Tai Tokerau has the highest rates on both measures, as we can see for children in care, the picture changes.

Now East Coast, Wellington and Upper South, Auckland South and Bay of Plenty all have higher crime rates but lower treatment rates than average.

So this shows us that some regions have more meth related problems but not enough treatment.

This suggests that a one size fits all approach isn't effective.

Instead we need to partner with local communities to design interventions that address their specific needs.

And as we move forward, it is crucial that we evaluate, where possible, what works and what does not in each region so that it can ensure our solutions

and interventions are both effective and targeted.

Oranga Tamariki and Health New Zealand are working together to look at additional services in each region and that work is happening now.

So to summarise, these are the key takeaways of what we have discussed.

First of all, children in care have much higher rates of parental meth related offences and substance use treatment, 10 times higher than the general children population to be specific.

Even though we see a steady decline in these rates to early 2024, we planned to extend our analysis to understand what happens next and the impacts it brings.

Last but not least, to tackle meth use and related crime, we need interventions that are targeted, based on evidence and shaped by local knowledge.

A one size fits all approach will not work. We will work closely with local communities to find better solutions and keep checking what works in each region to make sure our efforts are effective.

And that is the end of my presentation. Thank you for the attendance.

Should I thank you Thuong for that presentation.

We’ll move on to the next presentation and then if we've got some time at the end, we might come back for pātai, for questions.

Thank you.

So next up we have Horiana Jones. Horiana’s a registered clinical psychologist and team leader for Oranga Tamariki Bay of Plenty and East Coast clinical services. She also runs at Rapuhera Limited providing psychology consultation and private practise based in Rotorua.

Horiana is a BT trained co investigator on an FASD study, an active member of He Paia ka Totara, the national Māori psychologists ropu. Kia ora Horiana, I’ll hand over to you.

Kia ora kia ora, am I sharing slides or are you sharing them? Ya, you let me know. Nothing like a bit of technical difficulties to get us warmed up for a morning presentation.

All right, kai ora katou, I am going to be having a bit of a korero with you guys this morning about I guess the whakapapa that underpins: Why do we see methamphetamine use and substance misuse showing up in the populations that we interface with every single day in Oranga Tamariki.

Hi I'm a clinical psychologist team leader psychologist I live in Rotorua, born and bred in Waikato Tainui.

To open up this korero or I would like us to have a little think about this whakatauki here.

Harahara a uta harahara a tai – ka kore nga rawa o uta, o tai. He whenua mate. That translates to generally a loss of resources are barren land. I want us to hold that front and centre as we walk through the rest of this presentation and get you guys to be thinking about

how does that whakatauki relate to the korero that we're about to lay down? You might notice my beautiful background and the background in the back of the slides in front of you. That is a picture of arguably the most beautiful lake in the world. Tarawera. And that is my ukaipo. That's the place that I call home. So there's a reason

why that picture is there and we’ll weave it back into the korero. We can move to the next slide. Thank you Janet. So our previous presenter has done a beautiful job and laying down kind of what the data tells us around methamphetamine use in Aotearoa. It's also spoken to the effect that it doesn't necessarily a clear representational

 

indication to what the actual rates look like for the whānau we interface with everyday and maybe not giving a clear depiction I guess for myself as a frontline kaimahi. We see parents every single day that struggle with substance misuse. We see parents that have unfortunately may not have the care of their tamariki.

anymore due to those difficulties and we see other whānau at the end of the spectrum that have been able to heal through their substance misuse and have retained the care of their Tamariki again. It's really important to understand that methamphetamine use, substance misuse, is not a lifelong sentence. It is a journey and it is important for us to understand the

drivers of why we see a population of people using substances in the way that they do as it is a symptom as opposed to it being

a specific behaviour.

So as we know, or we may not know this, but Māori are disproportionately impacted by substance misuse and specifically methamphetamine use. We see higher rates in rural areas and areas where social deprivation are high. Why is this? It's because then we can be linked to social indicators

like colonisation, systemic racism and intergenerational trauma. And it's important that we lay down this korero and in the next slide, we're going to use our model to kind of dig into what we mean by there.

If you could go to the next slide for me that would be awesome.

I'll talk to you in a while while you're switching to the next slide. This model is called the intergenerational trauma model. It was developed by Waikaremoana Waituki and Andrew McLaughlin. This model sits within a

Kaupapa Māori intervention that was developed for substance misuse. This model helps us to understand the picture of why. Why is it that we see a population of people disproportionately represented in substance misuse and it's important for us to acknowledge before colonisation

our people practised, were immersed, were embedded in mātauranga Māori and ultimately that mātauranga led them to live lives where they were flourishing in terms of their mauri, their whānau, and their connection to whenua and taiao. So what happened?

We know that through the dispossession of land, through attack on family structures, through attack on belief systems, in the introduction of disease, alcohol and drugs, that it has shift us, shifted us as a people away from the things that we know help us to heal and help us to be well.

So when we think about the colonial impact and then laid against the current kind of footprint that is being lived from colonisation, we see things like a loss of language show up in our people, a loss of knowing who and where they come from, a loss of connection to the things that bring us, have always bought us, wellness mairano.

We see discrimination and what we know is that as a result of that journey from colonisation and then the footprint that it has left, we see whānau Māori disproportionately showing up in all of the negative social indicators that we wouldn't want to be seeing, such as adverse childhood events,

Care and protection stats. I think the most recent stats I looked at for our tamariki in care, 65% of them identify as Māori. That is not an accident. And it is a result of this model that we are kind of laying down. And so when we think about substance misuse, it's important that we hold it against the backdrop of inter generational trauma,

and the outcomes from that process. So we also know that racism weaves into that process and social deprivation. So you are 7 times more likely to use substances, to use methamphetamine, when you live in an environment where social deprivation is present, where poverty is.

You’re also more likely to use when your whānau or friends or other people around you are using. And so it's important for us to think about sometimes substance misuse meets certain needs that aren’t getting met in other areas in our lives and that indication of it kind of

being a socially mediated behaviour is a primary kind of example of that. So what other ways that methamphetamine what are the ways that we understand the functions of it or why people use it? Essentially what we know and what the literature tells us is that when you have been exposed to trauma, sometimes methamphetamine

and substance misuse is a great way to numb, to cope with the everyday stresses, to deal with the amount of strain that you are navigating on an everyday basis. Sometimes it can help with exhaustion, sometimes it can help with stress. Sometimes that can be the only social interaction that you get is whilst using. So when we understand substance misuse in that light

it helps us to think about, so then how do we intervene? So although methamphetamine can provide short term relief, ultimately it becomes a cycle, a reinforcing cycle cycle because it impacts on long term harms. And if we shifted to the next slide we can think about what does it look like in terms of how it effects

the brain and behaviour. So when we use methamphetamine, what we know and what the evidence tells us is that it immediately gives you a significant boost and dopamine and other things that kind of go on in your brain that make you feel really good in the short term. And if we go back to that whakatauki around a barren land,

And a whenua that isn't thriving, we can think if you in your life do not have much going on for you and constantly you are navigating stressors in everyday life, it would be good to have something to make you feel good. And the science tells us that methamphetamine immediately gives you a big boost of dopamine, which helps people to feel good.

Um, what we know though is that the long term impacts of methamphetamine use are chronic depletion of dopamine. So what that means is that your brain gets used to it being provided dopamine, being provided externally and then doesn't promote it or create it for itself. So ultimately that impacts on our ability when

we see a withdrawal from methamphetamine use, those feel good hormones are not being released naturally, which can be really difficult for our whānau who are trying to pull away from methamphetamine use. We also know that if you have had those exposure to trauma and early life, it significantly impacts the way that your brain develops, responds, manages stressors,

weights up pros and cons, regulates emotions. So, not only is that immediately impacting them in the here and now, we know that they are more likely to use if you've had exposures to complex trauma in your early life due to some of those areas that are impacted.

We know again that in the long term, impaired chronic use of methamphetamine further impacts on structures of the brain such as areas that are responsible for impulse control, empathy and emotion regulation. When you think about that in the context of care and protection, those are pretty important skills to be a parent. We need

to be in control of our impulses, we need to be empathetic towards our tamariki. We need to be able to regulate our emotions to be the best parents, that we want to be in. The reality is that chronic and long term use of methamphetamine strips away the fabric of us being able to do those things as parents.

Ka pai. So we’ll move to the next slide. That's immediately what it kind of does for our brain. We've laid down the korero around. It's important for us to view methamphetamine as a way of needs being met. And so we think about how do we intervene? How do we support? We need to shift from a mindset of

us not having opportunity or access to things and methamphetamine or substance misuse being an answer to that and shift more to the way we think about fulfilling life in other areas of our whānau’s kind of basic needs. So a shift from barren to plentiful.

How do we support our whānau to get their needs met in other ways so that there isn't a reliance on substances to fill those needs for us? And the literature is really clear cut, like evidence doesn't support enforcement-only approaches, doesn't support punitive approaches to minimising

substance misuse. Effective treatments set within a combination of trauma informed relational practise and pharmaceutical approaches. So when we think back to what we just talked about in terms of the brain and if you have a dopamine depletion and other kind of things that help you to feel good in life, help you to sleep, help you to regulate.

If we immediately take that away, we need to be able to support whānau with medications to be able to bolster some of those kind of depletions that they may see. In combination worth really intensive and meaningful interventions that are Kaupapa Māori in their grounding

And/or are psychosocial so they're not just looking at stopping substance misuse. They're talking about they're thinking about the drivers of why we see substance misuse showing up. So what we know is that we need to be able to bolster well-being generally and that it's not just about abstinence.

Abstinence alone is not a sufficient enough intervention in order for us to tackle the problem that we see our whānau facing in terms of methamphetamine use.

Ka pai. So go to our final slide.

So this beautiful model, I don't know if someone left or right for you guys, this beautiful model on the screen as if is called Whiti te Rā. It is again another model that is delivered as a part of a wider training. And this is just a plug I guess for any of our community partners out there. This is a training that is delivered and run and funded through Te Rā Ora.

It's called Pae Tata Pae Tawhiti, and again it's a

an intervention for substance misuse and this model sets within it and really what it speaks to is it is identified amongst the literature and amongst kind of whānau experience – what are the pathways to well-being that work for our whānau. And what we know is that it sits in our understanding or whakapapa, who and where we come from. It's sits in our

Knowing and understanding our te reo Māori and what that means. It's sits in our taiao. It's sits in our waiwerataunga, it's sits in mahi toi in our connection to kind of different activities that help us to feel well within ourselves. And it sits in our whānau dynamics and feeling connected to our whānau is super important thing for us

to feel as though we're getting where we need to go to in life and I guess where we land in terms of the implications for our care and protection mahi is that we need to shift from the old lens around control fear based, punishment based ways of responding to substance misuse and we need to implement

a new lens and that lens needs to come from a space of curiosity where we are understanding what are the drivers of substance misuse for you? How do we implement and support you to be able to bolster up other areas of your life so that those needs are being met elsewhere?

We need to view methamphetamine as a trauma response and not as a moral failing. There are still really strong narratives in our society around the types of people that use methamphetamine and although this korero specifically speaks to maybe whānau that are you know.

And in harder positions or as a result of intergenerational trauma, we know that there are subsets where methamphetamine pops up and in some other areas of our life. This korero is still pertinent, it’s still relevant in those types of settings as well, essentially we have to understand the drivers. It's important that we're building trust and culturally safe relationships with our whānau

and collaboration across services. So if we're thinking about it being a kind of more holistic approach, our services need to tackle addiction, yes, but they need to tackle social deprivation. We need our whānau to hit homes and to have their basic needs being met out. Our interventions need to be trauma informed and bedded in Kaupapa Māori practice and

be grounded in the things that we know work for that population. And we need to focus on whānau well-being and child safety together as a team.

That is my korero and I will hand it back over to Janet and I'm excited to hear our next presenter speak.

Said Trina, Dennis and Kirsten. And we have you, have you here. We're just going to spotlight you, my friends. And then whilst we're doing that I'll just go through

with introducing our presenters.

Trina Dennis and Kirsten are from Community Action on Youth and Drugs, CAYAD Service and I'm gonna actually … I’m going to get them to introduce themselves because I think it's a really powerful puraku that they're going to share with us send and that will come through and what they're saying today.

Now, are we going to be able to spotlight our people? Otherwise, I'll just stop sharing.

Trina I might just hand over to my friend and then your face will pop up as you as you keep speaking.

Um, are we able to take the slide off as well?

 

Alright.

A ka pai

Athena Tato, I'm in Houma, Kristen and Dennis. Maybe we just do our kwaio nor here um won't quite clear now, he quipped first and then I'll go into what we prepared a.

Yeah, I do, you fellows. How about you fellows go first and then I'll leave then and then do our short summary.

Kia ora te whare…

… my name is Dennis O'Reilly. I'm a white boy from Timaru, joined the Black Power and I'm part of Community Action on Youth and Drugs.

Ko Kirsten Mullany taku ingoa I am one of the wahine that has the privilege of working alongside well here in Waioheke and through their substance misuse journeys and I am embarking on some postgraduate study next year are looking at psychedelic therapies.

Kia ora

Ko Katrina Bagget ... I currently work for Massey University. I’m the project manager alongside my friend Ngaire…

for Community Action on Youth and Drugs. It's a public health kaupapa funded by Te Whatu Ora we serve our kaimahi located in 20 sites across the motu, some of who are here today. And of course with our incredible

whānau from Waioheke and Hawkes Bay whānau ora and I do want to start with a whakatauki… this is a real driver for us and our mahi. We can't do this mahi alone, and I'm sure you all know.

The importance of collective action not at a strategic or systems level

Um, but obviously I'd like to acknowledge Janet and the team from Oranga Tamariki for organising this webinar

Got your microphone on? Ask everybody online to mute please. Thank you.

Look at our flow whānau, we’ll get our flow. We have these technical things that come up with that online mahi. I just like to acknowledge your team Janet, but also talked Thuong and Horiana … I'm sure many of the patai so we received have

been answered from your insightful and really interesting presentations.

Your microphone is on, Maria.

Thank you. When Dennis, Kirsten and I were preparing for this webinar, we spoke to a number of our whānau across the motu and as I said we've got 20 sites across Aotearoa.

Um, but we also felt it was really important to have a bit of a brief summary, some of which has been covered by the earlier speakers, so we're not gonna double up on that. And I've started to cut some of that out, but, um, you know, three things that we wanted to focus: Harm from meth, but

I think we know quite a bit about that right unless we're living under a rock. I'm sure we're all fairly well aware of the harms of methamphetamine and impacts on whānau, but in particular stories of hope. So while hoping not to tell you how to suck eggs because I know there are many people on here

today with great experience, so you'll mahi and so if I reflect back to what Thuong was talking about about waste water testing.

So why the increase? So, you know, she shared about the doubling up and according to the police and just with hui that we've been and as well, um, NZ consider the golden nugget. So we wanted to go a bit out to come back in to the community. Um, and so where transnational

crime groups so now involved in the importation of methamphetamine into Aotearoa. Previously, we were looking at right domestic clean lab and manufacture of methamphetamine, however, and this is shown in seizures at the border now too. Um, we are seeing more from an importation.

Well, why am I saying this? Because it brings something else into play for us now and our communities and I think I will let Dennis touch on that a bit more.

We also had some questions about research and I think one of the things I'd like to point you in the direction of is the New Zealand drug trends survey. This research is led by Professor Chris Wilkins at Massey University. I'm also happy to share it out, but through this research when you see that there is a decline in price,

a tripling of seizure rates and the significant increase of meth identified in waste water testing,

it suggests a saturated meth market in New Zealand. So this coupled with what we know in our local communities and anecdotally, it seems that we have current users using more but I'm going to refer back to Dennis. He will share some more information on that, particularly I think the growth of younger users.

I mean, certainly a decade ago, this was not a drug of choice of young people. And I think to certainly concealing and some cases now 4 generations of whānau using meth. Um, and we know that harm it comes in many different forms.

The previous two speakers shared insights around this. I’m particularly reflecting on Horiana’s korero, the why, why are we seeing meth use, um, but also the recommendations of care and good practise. So …

Before I turn to our Rangatira Dennis and Kirsten, I'd like to share this … with you. There are two wahine Māori that I hold in high regard. They embody aroha whānau first and tumanako and hope.

I’ve anonymised the purako to protect their identities, but this could be a story that resonates with you. Or perhaps this could be your journey or the journey of your whānaunau or people you support. The first is of a nanny who stepped in at a time when Mama was unable to care for her tamariki due to their meth use. Along with other mokopuna

And other whānau members, they cared for their whanaunanga.

Through the many highs and lows of life and involvement of Oranga Tamariki.

Mama loves her pepi deeply but was not in a position to care for them as she was deep in her addiction to meth.

After a number of years, Mama slowly turned her life around and today with the support of people and in the community and I must say this particular purakau is one based on someone that was outside of the norm of the support services available in their community.

So she turned her life around and today has her Tamariki back in her care. She's active and sports and education both hers and theirs and alongside her whānau in creative whānau she has done and continues to do the mahi in her own way. She has stepped into her own mana Motuhake.

My wahine is as real as they come and these two wahine are sheroes to me. They embody aroha, whānau first, and importantly hope. But the journey was far from easy. The support services in the community are stretched and lacking.

Or lost due to funding cuts.

Access and choice issues increasing for our rural communities.

So what I'm, what I'm trying to say here is that systemic changes are needed across our system and certainly increasing sustainable long term funding. Um, yeah, but with that you know, also our community led and peer led

Support and again funding there.

So I'm just going to leave it there. I'm going to turn to our fabulous, friends. And I'm gonna start with our Rangatira Dennis. Over the past two decades of work of your mahi and people you've worked alongside.

And also want to acknowledge Mani Adams and um and Eugene Rider as well as there are many others. I I know that, but I particularly want to acknowledge them and their mahi too. So in your mahi to uplift whānau or and minimise the harm of methamphetamine as well. What are some key insights and concerns you

would like to share with the whānau here today.

Kia ora tātou.

Having listened to the first two presenters, I'm reminded of Meta Kingi Waitaha when he spoke in Parliament in 1868, he said that I come before you as a child, whereas amongst my own people I'm an old man and Horiana and I thought your korero was fantastic.

The first thing to state from my point of view is that I've used methamphetamine. I've had what one might call a liberal attitude to the use of recreational substances. Also come from a background in street gangs and have witnessed most substances, including prescription medicines being misused.

And abused.

I tried meth when I said a low point in my life and experienced that incredible dopamine hit that cast my troubles aside and made me feel once more in charge of my world.

It did not take long before that world became topsy turvey and my whānau put me on notice that it was either this stuff that I seemed to put before everything else, or them.

Bang for buck meth remains the best hit in town. You don't have to be a rocket scientist or an Auckland eye surgeon to figure out that people use drugs because in the moment they satisfy a profound need.

You only have to be a human being to realise that you can't muck around with your brain chemicals without consequences for your mental and physical health and your relationships. This is called lived experience and it's why people who have walked in the lonesome valley of addiction and recovery

make very effective change agents when working with others going through a similar predicament.

It helps when others know that you know what you're talking about, it removes one layer of judgement.

Besides feeling pressure from my ho rangatira and my kids, the penny dropped when my friend Honi Day, a Black Power leader, suicided after an intense methamphetamine induced psychotic episode.

Alcohol remains the most harmful and destructive social drug in Aotearoa.

But meth primarily I think because of its propensity to induce rapid addiction and its consequential interference with the natural uptake of dopamine, and Horiana related to that, causing a meth related illness called anhedonia.

Wreaks havoc on relationships and whānau well-being.

I described this illness anhedonia as muting the auto aroha button, cancelling the natural buzz we get when we are with our kids and loved ones.

I identify anhedonia as the reason why previously loving mums and dads seem to turn into fiends almost overnight.

And figuring out how to counter that and its consequential harms on tamariki is the reason why we have gathered here virtually today.

Having come to my senses, I realised that Honi’s death, but one in a string of such suicides, was a harbinger of big trouble to come from the communities that I love.

And with this realisation in mind, at Honi’s graveside, I asked for permission from the assembled grand rangatira to take a stance against the substance that was taking our friends and family from us. I wanted to run an awareness campaign.

In that highly emotional environment, they agreed.

I do not believe they considered how committed and intense I would be.

Even though people have threatened my life because I have interfered with their business or criticised their lifestyle, that permission has acted as a protective, whāriki and I remain grateful for it.

In 2004 I went to the late Jim Anderton, at that time the Minister of Health, and told him that we were in for trouble and this is how I ended up with CAYAD.

Initially we had two full time equivalents, myself and a Black Power leader, Mani Adams, who had come to a similar conclusion as me.

We called our initiative Mokai Whānau Ora.

The poet Jimmy Baxter had a name for the community we loved, the lost and lonely, the homeless, prisoners and former prisoners, those with addictions and mental health issues, and gang members. Hemi called us the tribe of Ngā Mōkai.

May Christ have mercy on us when we die. The tribe of Ngā Mōkai who can do nothing well may he keep us out of hell.

Mani and I took off around the country and using a participatory action research tool called Whānau Future Narrative, we visited marae, prisons, tertiary institutions, community groups and the Prostitutes Collective.

If you want to know about current community drug use, always ask the local prostitutes.

With the feedback, we constructed what we called the Antipodean Community Resilience frameworks. Antipodeans intimates not only our Southern Hemisphere location, but also the reality of our feedback.

For instance, the intuitive social response with combating the supply of drugs is the war on drugs. Attack, we called it.

Similarly, as old as the biblical forbidden apple, the auto responses don't just say no, as it were.

We realised that in the war on drugs, the drugs are winning.

And that as Nancy Reagan's Just Say No programme demonstrated, abstinence comes a poor second.

Consequently, we created a matrix with the horizontal axis with attack at the left end of the continuum and embrace at the right.

And a vertical axis with dissuade at the bottom of the continuum and persuade at the top.

When we populated the model with the feedback, we found that most responses were in the persuade/embrace quadrant. Embrace, we're on your side. Persuade, come, let's do this better thing.

The model is 20 years old, but it's concordant with most research, such as the excellent Helen Clark Foundation and New Zealand Drug Foundation work and broad international recommendations.

Some people still want to march and protest against meth, but it's akin to the citizens of Kiev marching at night to protest Russian drone strikes.

Similarly, rather than public meetings to express outrage, what we require is private meetings to express support and give help.

Like extreme weather brought by climate change, meth is here and we better learn to live with it, build resilience and seek the least bad outcome. Kia ora.

Kia ora, I just want to vote on from there over the over the decades, you heaven. You've touched on some of it in your korero, but I wonder about the approaches, the approaches such as the, Mana Wahine Ora programme, although Kirsten’s gonna go into that shortly.

The Rangitāne Ora programmes, the hapū kind of work at the hapū level as well. So how has your approach changed? How you and your teams approach has changed and why?
I think we've moved from a pathology model to a potential model and I think Horiana expressed that.

 

And we don't need to replicate it.

Ka pai, I will go straight into the Mana Wahine then. So the Mana Wahine Ora Kaupapa you’ve been involved in has been very successful. You’ve been involved with with … with methamphetamine or substance use in your community. So tell us about this mahi, some of your learnings and some of the successes.

So sure.

So, listening to the previous kōrero, there is no doubt that this is a grim and serious situation, but from our perspective, I just want to let everyone know that there is hope.

So when wahine first walk through the door, the story we hear most often is methamphetamine. That's the drug that usually tips everything over the edge. But if we stop at meth, we miss the full picture. Almost every one of our wahine is a poly‑drug misuser, normally using alcohol, synthetics, or whatever numbs the pain fastest.

And alongside that come behaviours that rip the whānau apart — stealing from Nan, screaming at the kids, and disappearing for days.

Truthfully, many of them didn't choose to come to us. Some were given a clear message by whānau: get help or you're no longer welcome here. Some were already in the OT system. One more incident and their tamariki would have been uplifted. So they arrive angry, ashamed, terrified, and often still rattling

from withdrawal, and that’s a starting point.

So we set up a programme that was based around Sir Professor Mason Durie’s Te Whare Tapa Whā. We didn't want to pathologise methamphetamine or substance misuse. We knew that if we just labelled our wahine as meth addicts and threw them into a clinical‑type programme, we'd missed the mark. Also, we all know addiction doesn't live in isolation —

it knocks down every wall of the whare. So our programme, in a nutshell: whanaungatanga, good kai, sleep hygiene, and intentional movement powering new thinking patterns, new behaviour therapy, and relapse prevention. Taha wairua — reconnection, identity.

Karakia, waiata, time on the whenua or moana, and taha whānau — rebuilding trust, connection, bringing tamariki home safely, whānau hui, and of course our four walls held up by whenua.

But the real magic wasn't the model on the wall; it was deciding that we would never pathologise substance use.

We didn't want to spend our days hunting sickness. There was plenty of that. We wanted to grow wellness. So instead of asking, “How do we stop you using?”, we started asking, “What new habits do we build today to make the old ones feel too small for the wahine that you are becoming?”

However, it didn't start well. Our first tranche of wahine came to us bleary‑eyed, withdrawn, with all kinds of trauma. They were deeply mistrustful of this yappy, energetic Chihuahua who was going to fix them — and I feel embarrassed saying that out loud. They were right to be mistrustful.

With my A‑plus textbook knowledge of theory, psychology, fitness, and nutrition, how could I go wrong? Well, the answer to that was very.

What I didn't take into account was that these wahine hadn't had any structure for years. Some had left school at 12, some had never worked. Their lives were chaotic and in some ways hedonistic, but their brains were essentially broken from this methamphetamine poison. So implementing a structured programme wasn't a good idea. It just made our wahine overwhelmed

and resentful. So I walked in thinking that a programme structure and a bit of tough love would be enough. Turns out it was too much, too soon, and in the wrong order. The first few weeks were rough. Some stopped showing up, others came but sat with their hoods up, arms folded, eyes on the floor. And I felt like I was failing them and failing myself.

I went home most nights questioning whether I even belonged in that room.

One morning I had the realisation that this wasn't working. So I threw the rigid timetable in the bin and instead of dragging them into my structure, I started asking what they needed to feel safe enough to even think about change. Some days it meant just sitting around drinking coffee, writing, journaling, art therapy, talking — or not talking.

Some days it meant driving someone to the dentist or the doctor, or to pick up the kids.

Some days it meant turning the gym session into a walk to the awa because pressure and no walls felt kinder on their nervous systems. We kept the framework of Te Whare Tapa Whā, but stopped treating it like a checklist and started treating it like a wharenui. We were all trying to rebuild one brick at a time in whatever order made sense.

Yeah, so slowly the hoods started coming down. Laughter snuck into the kitchen while we cooked. One wahine started turning up early every day to put the jug on and get the room ready. Another asked if she could bring her tamariki next time. These were small things, but massive when trust was being built from such a small base.

But hope doesn't live in perfect programmes or funding announcements. It lives in cups of tea, and showing up even when someone yells at you, and admitting out loud that you've got it wrong, and listening when someone finally tells you where it hurts.

The initial wahine who walked in bleary‑eyed that first Monday are now working or in tertiary education. They are engaged mums who coach netball and marching and soccer, who ring me most days just to tell me they had a good day.

So we didn't fix them — we just gave them enough space for them to start fixing themselves. And we haven't stopped learning how to hold that space better. That’s the caveat. Real hope is not linear. It’s slow and messy and humbling, and it may cost your ego first, but there is hope, and it’s worth every bit of it.

Kia ora.

Thank you so much for the very powerful share and massive acknowledgement to the mama that you're working alongside as well, and their whānau. And this is a question for both of you. From your experience, what practical changes could Oranga Tamariki make to better support tamariki in care and their whānau,

particularly when methamphetamine use is a factor? I know that you work alongside whānau navigating those spaces. So yeah, over to you.

So the first thing is just going back to that original data. A lot of activity is actually under the radar. There are many families who intervene before it gets to OT because they're terrified about uplifts. And when it gets to the issue of uplift,

I've been impressed with — although OT get a lot of crap thrown at them — the professionalism of the OT workers and the preparedness to work through, for instance, the Te Whare Tapa Whā model to find a solution for a specific whānau.

The things that come up quite quickly are the need — often the families coming in to help do not themselves have adequate resources. So getting fundamental things quickly: another bed, more food, clothes, whatever.

A lot of these children, either through secondary gestation of methamphetamine or because they’re still on the breast, are quite hyper in their own right. So medical care, skin care, and all of that in the first instance. There are some very real practical things right at the get‑go: getting bank accounts sorted, getting food supplies sorted.

Then there’s the longer curve. Once the children start to stabilise, trust relationships build, and that longer curve begins to appear. Then we go back into more conventional support systems.

Yeah, I've got nothing to add to that. And the Oranga Tamariki workers that have come to us have always been absolute utmost professionals. They’ve done their best to work with whānau and with us to ensure that these kids are taken care of properly. So I want to thank you for that.

We’ve recently discussed community‑led responses and funding being directed into specific areas to minimise the harm of methamphetamine.

What are two key recommendations you'd suggest to strengthen this approach?

Well, for funders to get away from the algorithm of thinking there's some formula that can be scaled up. We are cellular at a community level. We're an organic thing, so allow that to occur. It’s discretionary effort that becomes the multiplier.

Even if it looks like there are duplicates and multiple things happening in a community, water finds its own level. People sort out who they feel comfortable with. Don’t get agitated because there’s more than one thing happening in an area. Tap into discretionary effort. Believe in the people already doing the work. Fund them. Support them to the extent that you can.

Have you got anything to add to that, Kirsten?
No thanks.

We're actually at our time now.

Just a huge acknowledgement to you both for the mahi that you do, and to all the whānau here and across the motu. We do have recommendations, but probably the biggest one is to share knowledge and information —

resources about what worked and what didn’t. Many of us here today are working to minimise the harm of meth and to uplift whānau ora. That’s the potential we’re striving for.

I do want to stress again long‑term sustainable funding — not short‑term, one‑year funding models. I’m speaking to the converted here, so I’ll pause. Any final recommendations?

Just one thing, thinking of the words of Martin Luther King: when it comes to resilience, if you can't fly, then run. If you can't run, then walk. If you can't walk, then crawl. But whatever you do, keep moving forward. And that’s what we’ve got to do in this situation.

Kia ora.

Thank you for joining today. Over to you Janet.

As you can see, we have had a breadth of pūrākau shared with us today.

And we’ve come to time, which is really great — we’ve caught up despite the technical difficulties.

Just wanting to end with some key take‑outs. We’ve pulled three key messages from the sessions.

First, meth harm and care needs urgent attention — and that means regional and partnered action.

Second, it’s time to move from punishment to healing using Kaupapa Māori approaches that put whānau wellbeing at the centre.

Third, we need united, community‑led action to prevent harm and protect our tamariki. These aren’t just ideas — they are calls for us to work together.

We also heard many great ideas for future seminar topics. We’ve grouped these into themes and will work to bring these sessions to you.

Finally, thank you for joining us today. A huge acknowledgement to our guest speakers — Thuong, Horiana, Trina, Dennis, and Kirsten. It has been an honour and privilege to kōrero with you.

If you haven’t already, please email us to join our mailing list. You can also find our publications at the link below.

Once we’ve edited this segment and removed technical issues, you’ll receive notification that it’s available.

We look forward to seeing you at future sessions. I’ll now close with a karakia.

Janet, before you close — if we have questions, where do we send those?

If you can email us via the research inbox, we can forward those directly to the researchers.

I’ll just end with a karakia.

Unuhia, unuhia
Unuhia ki te uru tapu nui
Kia wātea, kia māmā
Te ngākau, te tinana
Te wairua i te ara tangata
Koia rā e rongo
Whakairia atu ki runga
Kia tina
Hui ē! Tāiki ē!

Thank you everyone. Go well, and we look forward to talking with you soon.