Taking the temperature of Hurunui’s wellbeing

Hurunui District Council will be checking in on communities across Hurunui to ask about their wellbeing.

The Strategy and Community Committee endorsed staff at its recent meeting to start developing a Stronger Hurunui Community Wellbeing Strategy and supported a district-wide survey to go out to assess current community needs and gaps in provision.

Council's Community Partnerships Manager Rhea Duffy said the strategy would be modelled on the Stronger Waitaki community project, which has International Safer Communities accreditation, and be in line with work councils are undertaking across the country.

The Stronger Waitaki project continues to deliver strong community outcomes for its communities and is a great example for Hurunui to learn from in supporting the planning and community collaborative response already being undertaken, Duffy said.

Council's Chief Strategy and Community Officer Judith Batchelor said the data collated from the survey and community engagement would belong to the community and be available to the community.

"There is a lot of work happening to support our communities in the Hurunui, and we are looking to create visibility across all of our district on what resources are already available and where our communities might need further support," Duffy said.

Access to food, standards of living and safety were examples of data Council was looking to collate, with a cyclical audit proposed to take place every three years.

"The Hurunui survey is a collaborative research project that will help us hear from our different communities about what is going well and the issues that pose challenges. We will be creating a digital dashboard of baseline data on wellbeing perceptions. This could be used to track how our communities are doing, identify the gaps and secure outcomes that will encourage our district's wellbeing, and would be used to support external funding bids," said Duffy.

Mayor Marie Black welcomed the proposed community engagement as providing "a more richer, intense understanding of the needs of our communities and the issues facing us now and into the future".