Mental health to alter services over holidays

Jacaranda House will remain open over Christmas.

The Hawke's Bay Mental Health Service is shifting the way it offers services during the holiday period.

Walnut Grove in Hastings, and Napier's Jacaranda House will remain open over the Christmas/New Year period as drop-in centres.

The recovery centres are for people no longer at the acute stage of their illness, as the focus of the mental health service shifts from the recovery centres to a service delivery model developed after three years of patient feedback. Meetings and questionnaires produced a list of community desires for mental health services.

Contracts are expected to be in place next year with service providers. Until the changed service deliveries are in place, Walnut Grove and Jacaranda House will remain open as drop-in centres.

They will eventually be sold.

Te Whare Aronui, Walnut Grove and Jacaranda House were formally declared surplus to requirements at a Hawkes Bay District Health Board meeting in November. Their sale is estimated to raise $1.5 million, which is earmarked for a new $20 million health unit on the grounds of Hawke's Bay Hospital.

The new unit does not mean the centralisation of the revised service, director of area mental health services Simon Shaw said. Many services could be delivered throughout the community, including people's homes.

"We will have individual plans worked out with each current user of the recovery centres and they will be in place before December 19," he said.