A collective of 10 Whānau Ora support providers has helped over 5000 whānau in Auckland since Friday's floods.
Those at the coal face say they are using skills they learnt in the COVID-19 crisis but are also calling for the Government to offer better resourcing.
From door knocking, callouts, and home visits, to simply checking in on the families directly impacted.
For one mental health support worker, it's been very humbling.
"It's been overwhelming seeing what these families and whānau have been through," mental health support worker for Oranga Whānau, Te Whānau o Waipereira Victoria Halavaka said.
Residents on Chilcott Road in Henderson need help with the cleanup and some have yet to return. For one household, they were told by their landlords to move out.
For one woman who had just moved to New Zealand and was a first-time homeowner, her recently purchased property is now uninhabitable.
She didn't want to be interviewed but told Newshub she has no family living in the country.
"We are seeing that there will be some mental health issues and impacts, so there will be needs for counselling," Halavaka said.
Further down the road, 83-year-old pensioner Myrene Lee is 152cm tall.
She was one of many on her street rescued by the police when waters rose above her head on Friday.
She's returning to the house she's lived in for half a century.
"Everything has been locked up since Friday, so it's all very smelly now, as you can see, and it's difficult to move around because of the mud," Lee said.
Her house was white-stickered and as she waits for insurance assessors, the west Auckland Whānau Ora provider can assist with her immediate needs. This includes food and petrol vouchers, a health check and even cleaning up the property. These are wrap-around services Lee didn't realise were available.
"Really good really helpful, that'll be one thing that I don't have to be anxious about," Lee said.
Te Pae Herenga o Tāmaki chair Jacqui Harema heads the collective of 10 Whānau Ora providers. They have helped more than 5000 whānau so far.
"Whānau are really distressed about where they are going to live, displaced from their homes. Kai, of course, is the first thing that comes to mind. Most of the whānau, 95 percent of them, don't have insurance so they have lost everything. Whānau are just not in the state to be able to think past today [or] tomorrow," Harema said.
Manurewa Marae was the first of several to open their doors on Saturday and has relocated 24 families to emergency housing in the area.
"What we are seeing is our whānau in this community taking onboard their whānau in affected areas such as Māngere, and the wider Tāmaki, Pūkekohe coming into Manurewa," Manurewa Marae CEO Takutai Moana Natasha Kemp said.
However, there are huge concerns about overcrowding and long-term support.
"Currently we are in unprecedented times again like COVID. We've got flooding and families have just lost everything," Harema said.
"We are trying to adjust and what type of support is required and how much support is going to cost."
The collective partners are keen to put all the lessons they learned to get the community through COVID to good use as it recovers from this unprecedented flooding crisis.
