Reflections: Opportunities for improvement

While we aimed to engage as many Pacific disabled people and their families as possible during our community consultations, we acknowledge pre-existing challenges faced by Pacific disabled people in attending these consultations and we made efforts to ensure these logistical issues were accommodated.

In hindsight, we recognise that there were areas where we could have improved on, that in future, could enhance community talanoa of this nature for Whaikaha.

On a positive note, the community had expressed their appreciation for the face-to-face talanoa and their importance as the preferred method for all agencies to listen and gather their voices but also to connect with community members.

Online survey

The survey platform operated by Survey Monkey lacked the capability for participants to save and resume surveys once they started. This made it challenging for participants to complete the entire survey. This feature could potentially have increased our survey completion rate.

Zoom (online) talanoa

The timing of the Zoom talanoa was done during working hours and had limited the opportunity for family members to partake in this. We also had participants joining for the Pacific regions who weren’t fully informed of the background to the Action Plan.

Timing of our community talanoa

We scheduled sessions at different times to accommodate various regional needs. In some villages, morning sessions brought adults only and providers. In contrast, evening sessions brought the whole family. Despite our efforts, there were families who expressed interest but were unable to attend due to various reasons, the timing of the talanoa being a factor.

The value of social media

The value of social media became evident as we utilised our Whaikaha webpage, Facebook and LinkedIn channels. This proved highly effective in sharing information about our talanoa sessions and online surveys. Each time a post was made, we experienced a noticeable increase in emails and inquiries regarding our sessions or surveys.

While there was an increase in engagement after using social media, we also reflect that the reach to our Pacific communities through Whaikaha social media was limited as some Pacific communities were not yet aware of Whaikaha as a new Ministry.