Community Finders – A partnership based on community safety and wellbeing
Via Pasifika Medical Association Group
Pasifika Futures (PFL) - the Whānau Ora commissioning agency for Pacific families – in partnership with The Fono, mobilized a team of Covid-19 “Community Finders” to help stop the spread of the contagious Delta variant within the Pacific community.
“The role of the community finder is to locate an individual referral we receive from the Auckland Regional Public Health Service (ARPHS) because they are a positive case or a close contact”, says Whānau Ora Manager for The Fono, Europa Kupu, who has been working closely with the PFL team to manage the Community Finders initiative.
She says the role is challenging when there are difficulties getting in contact with an individual after the usual methods (phone/email) are exhausted. In these circumstances, other means of reaching out such as home visits are used but with Alert Level 4 restrictions.
“Usually their contact details are not updated and they are unaware that they are a positive case or a close contact. Once we get into contact with them, if they’re a close contact, we advise them to self-isolate at home until a mobile testing station arrives and if they’re a positive case, that someone from MIQ is arriving to transport them into managed isolation.
Our job is to ensure they are safe and to check who stays at home with them so everyone understands that they need to self-isolate. We refer them back to ARPHS so they can then do their job.”
This collaborative approach is echoed by PFL Whānau Ora Support Services Lead Luana Clifford, who receives the referrals for the Community Finders and is in regular contact with The Fono and ARPHS.
“When we get an uncontactable individual referred through to us, we escalate it through to The Fono. It’s important that we all work together to support our community as best as we can. To date we have successfully found and supported 13 of 16 referred contacts.
We offer wrap-around support, so if a family is needing to isolate, we offer food and utility relief. For anyone going into MIQ, they don’t have time to prepare so a lot of it is psychological. It’s really stressful, especially if they have children, so we step in to offer support.”