Workforce Development

The NgOIT 2007 workforce survey report provides information and analysis from the perspective of non government organisations (NGOs) who provide mental health and addiction services. This project creates a workforce snapshot of the industry. The 1833 individual respondents are people employed within 212 organisations and reflect the diversity of the NGO sector across New Zealand.

The project included an overview of some recent information collections undertaken by other agencies. The impact, effectiveness and learnings of this prior work informed and shaped the NgOIT 2007 workforce survey.

By aligning as closely as possible to the data collection model of the national Health Workforce Information Programme (HWIP) and nationally agreed job codes the survey begins to complement the work of other agencies.

 The support workforce was by far the largest work group that responded to the survey. This is a critical group that usually has the most contact with people that use services and future service delivery depends on this workforce.

An emerging trend appears to be the five percent of support staff who identify themselves as Peer Support Workers. The highest number of respondents had been in their job for less than one year; however a significant group (27%) has remained int he workforce for five years or more.

The number of respondents who identified as Maori (19%) compared well with the numbers of Maori in New Zealand's population (13%). Maori were well represented in all work categories; support work. management and clinical.

The survey asked respondents who were registered as Health Professionals (390) to identify their registration board. The largest group were Nurses (171) with the next largest groupings Counsellors (74) and social workers (52). The Report suggests that there is more work to do in understanding the roles and ongoing needs of the clinical workforce employed within NGOs.