My Whare
An innovative response to housing youth in Aotearoa New Zealand.
My Whare is one of Visionwest’s youth housing initiatives that involves placing state of the art one-bedroom studios on residential properties to house young people who have had a challenging start.
How My Whare Works
My Whare includes supportive mentoring from a host family to help guide rangatahi who are transitioning out of care or homelessness towards fulfilling life, educational and employment goals. In this way, each rangatahi receives connection to community through shared meals and experiences with the host family, while being given the space to grow independently.
They also receive regular support and mentoring from a designated youth worker, who co-designs a path to independence with each young person, supporting them to learn the life skills necessary to live independently as adults.
Support for Hosts
Host Training
Visionwest provides an initial host training course, which is usually completed prior to the young person moving into the whare. The training will give you information and strategies you can use to assist your young person.
The Mentor
Each young person will have a My Whare mentor, a youth worker, who will assist and help engage them from education to employment and will help them transition to safe, stable accommodation at the end of the programme.
24/7 On-Call Support
In the unlikely event of a crisis outside of normal office hours, My Whare has a phone number that can be called in the evening and weekends. It is staffed by a roster of people who are involved with the programme and familiar with crisis management.
Supervision
Visionwest will connect all hosts with a supervisor who may be trained as a counsellor, social worker, therapist, psychologist or similar. They will meet you at a time that’s convenient for you for one-to-one supervision to assist you in your host role.
Currently our Youth Housing programmes are available in West Auckland. For more information please complete the form below.
