Crisis services will get more than a quarter of a $100m spend on mental health in this year's Budget, Health Minister Andrew Little has announced.
Little said community-based mental health crisis services would get $27.45m over four years from Budget 2022.
It would go to seven or eight services delivering things like residential and home-based crisis respite, community crisis teams, co-response teams, and peer-led services.
He said building capacity and workforces would take time, so a small amount of funding in the first year would lay the groundwork for gradual increases in future.
Specialist child and adolescent mental health and addiction services would also get $18.7m and a further $10m would be spent on developing the sector's workforce.
The more than $43m remaining in the Budget's mental health spend will be announced on Budget Day.
Little said the government-commissioned He Oranga report had found the first step needed would be ensuring better access to make it easier for people to get help earlier and closer to home, which prompted the Access and Choice programme and similar initiatives, but this next step would see improvements for people with the highest needs.
"People with severe mental health and addiction issues and their families have been patient through inaction by previous governments. They know building reliable services takes time. Now, three years into the plan to build a whole new mental health system, New Zealand is finally getting closer to a system we can be proud of," he said.
Sustained effort and investment would be needed to fully address the pressures on specialist mental health and addiction services, he said.
Little today also announced a further $90m from the Budget would be spent on the promised rollout of the Mana Ake in-school mental health programme to five more regions.
RNZ
