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The chair of the Whanau Ora Governance Group, Sir Mason Durie, says the creating of outside commissioning agencies should give communities a much greater say in how the scheme develops.
The governance group is disbanding now that Te Pou Matakana has been chosen as the North Island commissioning agency.
Sir Mason says the first phase of Whanau Ora involved the creation of collectives of heath and social service providers to deliver integrated services to families.
The next phase should extend into areas such as education and employment, and the three new commissioning agencies will need to demonstrate they are achieving positive results.
"One way to look at it is that adversity diminishes so that there’s less rheumatic fever, less criminality, less drop outs from school. The other way of measuring it is to do with achievements, so there are more children who get NCEA, parenting programmes become norms within whanau, whanau become health literate and financially literate, employment rises, so that is the achievement side of it. Both measures I think are going to be necessary," Sir Mason says.
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