1. Main Messages

• Partnering is essential for solving complex problems.

  Central government, local government, iwi, private sector, community and voluntary sector organisations and local communities of place need to proactively work together to generate community specific solutions.

• Around 860,000 New Zealand houses are under-insulated.

  These houses are often cold, damp and expensive to heat. This creates a range of negative impacts for occupants and the wider community. More than $5 billion may be required to upgrade insulation and add clean heating to the nation’s housing stock.

• Multiple benefits across multiple sectors.

  Healthy homes initiatives, which focus on making homes warmer, drier and healthier, have the potential to achieve multiple benefits across multiple sectors. Outcomes are dependent upon many different agencies and sectors continuing to work together at national, regional and local levels.

• A growing understanding of the importance of working together.

  While partnering terminology is used interchangeably (e.g. collaboration, partnership, cooperation), there is a growing shared understanding of the importance of working together.

• Partnering and collaborative working is valued...

  There are many committed and passionate people working within the healthy homes sector who strongly value partnering and collaborative ways of working. There are now many examples of successful multi-agency healthy homes collaborations happening across Aotearoa New Zealand.

• ...But needs attention to develop.

  Experience and know how about the best ways to work together within the healthy homes sector is still developing. There is consensus among contributors to this report that the sector needs to focus more attention on strengthening partnering practices.

• Healthy homes needs to be seen as a complex issue.

  Successful outcomes will be reliant on a shared national vision and a framework that supports and enables diverse local partnering models to be created that suit the needs and context of local communities, and other stakeholders.

• Shared vision, flexibility and supportive relationships are key.

  Shared visions and values, a flexible approach and establishing supportive respectful relationships were seen as the keys for successful intersectoral partnering by contributors to this report.

• Barriers and challenges to partnering exist.

  One of the main barriers and challenges for interagency partnering in the healthy homes sector is the quantity and certainty of funding streams for housing retrofits and the often short timeframes in which monies need to be spent.
  
  Other issues highlighted were:
  
  • gaps in national and regional leadership for cross sector collaboration. This in turn leads to uneven buy-in, participation and investment in healthy homes initiatives
  • sufficient time, capacity and established co-ordination mechanisms to effectively reflect on what is working and what could be done better and how to feed this through to relevant strategic and operational policy processes within the sector
  • well-developed partnering skill sets and know how, especially among those in key leadership positions
  • local need for flexibility and autonomy not being sufficiently recognised or supported.

• Both commercial and community sector insulation service providers are valued and recognised as having different strengths.

  Contributors to this report thought it was essential that both models continue to co-exist. However, tensions are rising, with genuine fears that many community sector providers may be pushed out of the market by larger commercial providers. A robust and transparent debate is required to discuss the relative merits of community sector providers and commercial providers and how the healthy homes sector can best accommodate and support those strengths.

• Community sector organisations and enterprises are a much valued part of the healthy homes sector, but need resources.

  There is a need for additional resourcing and purposeful capacity building to strengthen ability of Community sector organisations to deliver services and participate more meaningfully within collaborative sector initiatives (5). The community sector is keen to creatively explore more options for ‘self help’ and peer support. More certainty around future funding streams would enable community sector organisations to more confidently invest in organisational development and training.

• There is still considerable work to be done to better engage with both low income/high health-need communities and the rental sector in the benefits and pathways into healthy homes.

  While local social networking and connections are seen as beneficial, more experimentation and talking together with various low income/high health needs communities about ‘what works for them’ is still required.

• A new, national, intersectoral framework for healthy homes should be supported by additional mechanisms to improve local, regional and national communication and co-ordination.

  Potential synergies around learning, effective programme establishment and sector capacity building are unlikely to be fully realised without attention to resourcing.

• Considerable potential exists to extend healthy homes initiatives beyond core retrofit measures.

  In some areas, additional services and interventions include a health check (for houses and households), curtains, heating, and social checks that link people to services. However, some contributors to this report warn of potential overload on individual households if too much is added too fast.

• A commuity-led development approach could improve outcomes.

  Incorporating more community-led development approaches into the way that local healthy homes initiatives are designed, resourced and delivered could result in considerable gains to community wellbeing at the local level.

  Rather than be seen as stand alone interventions, there is potential for healthy homes to be integrated into comprehensive ‘place based’ community-led development initiatives that build on community strengths and assets to address other identified community needs such as safety, pride and identity, local economic development, and support for children and families.

• Validating and enabling greater local participation of local residents in healthy homes initiatives could lead to greater ownership of housing, and potentially broader wellbeing solutions, at a neighbourhood level.