Submission on the Draft Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2026-2036
Realising wellbeing, equity and participation through enabling technologies
1. About ETIC
The Enabling Technologies Impact Collective (ETIC) is a national, crosssector collective bringing together people with lived and living experience, Māori and non-Māori providers, researchers, innovators, educators and policy leaders.
ETIC exists to shift Aotearoa New Zealand from systems that primarily respond to deficits and distress, to systems that enable mana, participation and wellbeing. ETIC focuses on the ethical, co-designed use of enabling technologies as practical tools to support wellbeing across mental health, disability, education, social and community systems.
Enabling technologies
ETIC intentionally uses the term enabling technologies to ensure a broad, inclusive and future-focused framing. As used by ETIC, enabling technologies refers to technologies, tools and systems—digital or nondigital—that enable people to communicate, participate, self-manage, connect, and exercise choice and control in their lives.
This includes, but is not limited to, technologies and supports such as:
Communication supports, including augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), speech-generating technologies, captioning and transcription tools, sound amplification, language and literacy supports, and braille-based or tactile communication systems
Cognitive, sensory and emotional regulation supports, including sensory modulation tools, reminder and planning aids, wellbeing and self-regulation applications, and technologies that support attention, memory and emotional processing
Self-management and connection tools, including digital platforms that support peer connection, navigation of supports, wellbeing tracking, and access to trusted information and resources
Environmental and workplace technologies that reduce barriers and stress, accessibility and inclusion technologies, flexible work and learning tools and systems that reduce cognitive or sensory load
Technologies that support whānau, carers and the workforce, including shared care tools, training and decision support systems, remote collaboration technologies, and tools that strengthen safeguarding and quality
ETIC deliberately avoids narrow framings such as “digital health” or “assistive devices”, which can limit attention to service delivery or disabilityspecific contexts. Enabling technologies positions people as active agents in their own wellbeing and recognises technology as core participation infrastructure. This definition is used consistently by ETIC across its policy and advocacy work (www.etic.nz)
2. Strong alignment — and a critical gap
ETIC strongly supports the overall direction of the Draft Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2026–2036. We welcome its life-course approach, emphasis on prevention and early intervention, commitment to lived experience leadership, and focus on joined-up, community-based responses.
We also recognise the Strategy’s whakapapa in He Ara Oranga and Whakamaua: Māori Health Action Plan, particularly their focus on mana, equity, rangatiratanga and system transformation.
However, the Strategy does not yet fully give effect to these commitments because it under-recognises enabling technologies as core system enablers of mental health and wellbeing. Without explicit recognition, there is a risk of reinforcing a service-centric model that relies primarily on workforce expansion and clinical access despite increasing demand and workforce constraints.
3. Enabling technologies as expressions of He Ara Oranga
He Ara Oranga calls for a shift from a narrow clinical model to whole-of-life wellbeing, systems that uphold mana, autonomy and connection, and responses built around people, whānau and communities.
Enabling technologies directly support this shift. When co-designed with users and governed ethically, they enable communication, self-expression and self-determination; support participation in whānau, culture, education and employment; reduce reliance on crisis-driven responses; and allow people to seek support in ways that feel safe and dignified.
If the system is genuinely to uphold mana and rangatiratanga, people must have tools, not just services.
4. Giving effect to Whakamaua
Whakamaua makes clear that equity requires system change, not simply improved access to existing models. Enabling technologies reduce structural barriers for tāngata whai ora, whānau Māori, disabled Māori and neurodivergent Māori; support culturally responsive and locally led solutions; enable whānau-centred care beyond clinical environments; and strengthen choice, control and self-determination.
Without intentional inclusion of enabling technologies, the Strategy risks perpetuating inequities by privileging systems that work best for those who already fit them.
5. Embedding enabling technologies across the four priorities
Priority 1: Prevention and early intervention
Prevention requires everyday tools people can use in their own lives. Enabling technologies support emotional regulation, communication and connection across the life course; enable early self-management before distress escalates; and embed wellbeing supports in homes, schools, marae, workplaces and communities.
Priority 2: Access to supports and services
Access is not only about availability but about whether people can communicate their needs, navigate systems and engage in culturally and neurodiversity-affirming ways. Enabling technologies are essential to meaningful access, not optional enhancements.
Priority 3: Workforce
Workforce shortages will not be resolved by numbers alone. Enabling technologies support peer and whānau-led roles, reduce pressure on clinicians and enable staff to work alongside people rather than doing things to them. Workforce capability in enabling technologies is a strategic necessity.
Priority 4: Effectiveness and quality
A high-quality system adapts, learns and responds to people’s lives. Enabling technologies strengthen person-directed and trauma-informed care, embed lived experience in design and evaluation, and improve learning and feedback when governed ethically. Further, enabling technologies has the potential to strengthen safeguarding systems in line with the recommendations of the Royal Commission of Enquiry into State and Faith Based Care.
6. What must change in the final Strategy
ETIC calls for the final Strategy to explicitly recognise enabling technologies as essential enablers of wellbeing, mana and equity; embed enabling technologies across all four priorities; commit to co-design and lived experience leadership, including Māori leadership; build system and workforce capability; and align funding and accountability mechanisms to ensure equitable access.
7. Closing: from intent to impact
He Ara Oranga challenged Aotearoa to transform how wellbeing is understood and supported. Whakamaua calls for that challenge to be acted upon.
Enabling technologies are one of the most tangible and under-utilised ways to turn these commitments into lived reality. It is import that the final Strategy explicitly recognises the role of Disability Support Services and the providers who deliver supports and contribute to mental health and wellbeing services. There is a need for the Strategy to more clearly address funding, workforce capability and system settings, as current models do not support the level of innovation and transformation needed.
ETIC urges the Ministry of Health to explicitly embed enabling technologies into the final Strategy and stands ready to partner in this work.
Ngā mihi nui,
Wayne Ferguson on behalf o the ETIC Leadership Team
Enabling Technologies Impact Collective (ETIC)