Tararua health expo planning well underway

The first meeting to plan a health expo for the elderly was held on Monday. Photo / Supplied

A working party set up to organise a health expo forum for Tararua's growing elderly population held its first meeting on Monday and has hit the ground running.

Monday's meeting of a small sub-group of interested people who all work with the elderly in Tararua was convened by Tararua District Council representative Alison Franklin, a member of the Tararua Health and Wellbeing Group governance group.

Tararua Health and Wellbeing Group chair Sharon Wards said at the meeting she was grateful to the working party members whose passion and commitment to the provision of excellent services to the elderly was to be commended.

"Their interest in organising and hosting the first "Age on the Go" expo in Tararua will see a high-quality and professional one-day forum which aims to bring together many services and activities which can be accessed across our community."

Tararua Health and Wellbeing Group was established last year when MidCentral DHB decided to take a locality approach to better understanding the priority needs of the different communities that make up the district and place people and families/whānau at the centre of planning decisions.

Plans were produced for five different localities (TLA areas) across the Mid Central District of which Tararua is one.

In Tararua, the governance group was established from nominated members of service providers, community representatives and DHB personnel to oversee the implementation of key health initiatives over the next five years.

Two of the strategies in that plan focused on connections and healthy living. The Tararua group believed it was important to provide an expo forum for the growing elderly population across Tararua that brought together a wide range of services, activities and groups which contribute to ensuring the elderly community members are connected, healthy and well.

Franklin said the response from the working party at yesterday's meeting was amazing.

"For every item we had on the agenda, we had someone volunteer to do the homework. It's a very pro-active group."

The group will work with the Pahiatua Community Services Trust to apply for funding for the expo.

"We are hoping to make this an annual event so we want to make this first expo really work. We won't be charging exhibitors or people attending it so gaining funding is important," Franklin said.

Buses from Eketahuna and Norsewood will ferry people to the expo and the group will seek funding from Horizons Regional Council for that.

The working party has a list of exhibitors from a similar expo held in Horowhenua last year and they will all be contacted.

Franklin said on a local level service clubs would be approached for support, either financial or with manpower.

She said the group also had the offer of some courtesy vans to provide added transport on the day.

Planning is well underway for the expo which will be open to everyone. Woodville was selected as the venue because of its central location.

• The expo will be held on Thursday, November 7 in the Woodville Community Centre.