QUEENSTOWN: A ‘‘crisis recov­ery cafe’’ may be run­ning in the Queen­stown Cent­ral Lakes area by next April.

Health New Zea­l­and Te Whatu Ora has issued a request for pro­posal (RFP) for integ­rated men­tal health ser­vices in the region on the gov­ern­ment’s Gets elec­tronic tender web­site, seek­ing com­munity­based organ­isa­tions to deliver integ­rated crisis sup­port ser­vices.

A key aspect of the plan is a ‘‘crisis recov­ery cafe’’, an ini­ti­at­ive announced by Men­tal Health Min­is­ter Matt Doo­cey in Septem­ber, 2024.

There are seven such cafes oper­a­tional in New Zea­l­and. Queen­stown Cent­ral Lakes was selec­ted as another loc­a­tion because it was one of the fast­est grow­ing regions in the coun­try, where the res­id­ent pop­u­la­tion is expec­ted to reach over 100,000 in the next 10 years, while also exper­i­en­cing rampant vis­itor growth, the RFP stated.

The cafe ser­vice would provide an access­ible, drop­in, non­clin­ical altern­at­ive to emer­gency depart­ments for people exper­i­en­cing dis­tress relat­ing to a men­tal health and/or addic­tion con­cern, offer early inter­ven­tion and imme­di­ate peer sup­port, and would be ‘‘genu­inely peerled’’, with lived exper­i­ence at the centre of the ser­vice design, lead­er­ship and deliv­ery.

The cafe would also enable timely triage, ‘‘warm han­dovers’’, and sup­por­ted trans­itions to spe­cial­ist crisis ser­vices, primary care and com­munity sup­ports, when required.

‘‘The suc­cess of the ini­ti­at­ive will depend on mature and robust peer work­force sup­port struc­tures, lead­er­ship and staff, who are work­ing within an estab­lished peer com­munity of prac­tice,’’ the RFP stated.

‘‘Clin­ical expert­ise is essen­tial across the integ­rated model, but it must sup­port and not over­ride the peer­led nature of the cafe.’’

Other aspects of the integ­rated ser­vice would be a 24/7 clin­ic­ally­led crisis res­pite ser­vice, com­pris­ing two or three beds, to provide short­stay, peer­in­formed, clin­ic­ally­led crisis res­pite as an altern­at­ive to inpa­tient sup­port, oper­ated in a ‘‘home­like’’ res­id­en­tial set­ting, and an assert­ive out­reach and home­based crisis sup­port.

The approach was inten­ded to reduce pres­sure on inpa­tient men­tal health wards and provide people exper­i­en­cing acute men­tal dis­tress with greater choice and a recov­ery­focused, com­munity­based altern­at­ive to inpa­tient admis­sion.

It would also reduce the need for people to travel out­side the region for sup­port dur­ing peri­ods of acute dis­tress, and improve fin­an­cial viab­il­ity and sus­tain­ab­il­ity by enabling a shared work­force, shared infra­struc­ture and stream­lined path­ways, the RFP stated.

‘‘This model will also sit as part of the envis­aged con­tinuum of care cur­rently in devel­op­ment as part of the Cent­ral Lakes Clin­ical Ser­vices Plan­ning.’’

The RFP would close at noon on Septem­ber 2 — Health NZ expec­ted to begin the ini­tial 3­year con­tract, estim­ated to be val­ued at $1,374,154.28 per annum, in Novem­ber, and the ser­vice to be oper­a­tional by April 1.