Pride Whanganui's Christina Emery is keen to see the new funding spread out into the provinces. Photo / Bevan Conley
Pride Whanganui's Christina Emery is keen to see the new funding spread out into the provinces. Photo / Bevan Conley
Pride Whanganui's Christina Emery says the Government's $4 million investment in mental health support for young members of the Rainbow community is "absolutely epic", but the next step is to find out where the money will go.
"Yes, that's amazing, but tell me more, where's it going and who makesthe decisions?" Emery said.
"From Pride Whanganui's point of view, how is that going to benefit our community?"
Emery said she hoped individual regions would be spoken with to see what they needed, rather than a "top led" funding distribution.
"The needs of Auckland and Wellington people can be completely different to the needs of Whanganui people.
"Are they going to go and talk to the regions, DHBs and people on the ground that are dealing with this day to day and ask 'where is your greatest need?'?
"One town may have an extreme need for a counsellor, for instance, and for another it might be funding for transport to get whatever medical requirements they might need."
The Government announced on Sunday that most of the money - $3.2m - would be used to expand mental wellbeing services focusing on young rainbow New Zealanders, and the remaining $800,000 will be put into the existing Rainbow Wellbeing Legacy Fund, which was established as an acknowledgement of those New Zealanders who were convicted for homosexual acts before the law was changed in 1986.
The needs of the Whanganui rainbow community could be completely different to those in major centres, Christina Emery says. Photo / Neil Jones
Rainbow youth in Whanganui needed more support services, resources such as booklets and information, and robust programmes put into schools, Emery said.
"If the Government said 'right Whanganui, here's $100,000, what are you going to spend it on?', then that would be it.
"I know about my own community because I walk in it every day.
"In Whanganui I think we're doing well in terms of not getting hate and being supported, but what if you go to smaller places, like Sanson, Feilding and Marton?
"Give us a sniff of some of that $4m, because there's so much good I could do with it."
The funding was "an amazingly positive thing", Emery said, but more information was still needed.
"Youth and rangatahi in Whanganui need support services more than what we've got.
"We've got some great support services through SUPP and Youth Services Trust, but we need more, and we need more literal resources.
"At the moment we just fund our own resources and we get them printed from our own money. That's not enough though, it's just in immediate places.
"We want to be able to work with all the GP services, schools and education providers like UCOL, Ag Challenge, and 100% Sweet Whanganui, and make sure they have everything they need to support our rainbow rangatahi."
As for the Government's promise to ban conversion therapy this year, Emery said it "should be a no brainer".
Conversion therapy is based on a belief that people with diverse sexual orientations or gender identities are abnormal and should be changed so they fit within hetero-normative standards.
"I'm not sure, but hopefully it's sooner rather than later."
