Māori whānau caregivers of whānau members with chronic health conditions: Their experiences navigating the health system and accessing health services.

Health service providers are encouraged to view service support to Māori through a cultural lens as whānau rather than as individual clients (Haitana et al., 2021). Despite this premise to relate to whānau through a cultural context, whānau including whanau caregivers remain largely misunderstood by the health system and continue to face barriers to access necessary and critical health service support. Contributing to these barriers is a systemic lack of cultural awareness of the complex relationality of whānau and their needs in the context of caregiving. This constrains the ability of whānau caregivers to access health service support, generates dissatisfaction with the health system and perpetuates further health inequalities. This cultural disjuncture highlights the critical need for service providers to recognise whānau experiences as pivotal to the wellbeing of Māori. Therefore, this project focuses on Māori whānau caregivers accessing health services. As this project centres on whānau caregivers, a cultural methodology such as kaupapa Māori was chosen. Complementing a Māori worldview, a kaupapa kōrero approach was used to analyse semi-structured interviews with seven Māori primary caregivers of whānau with chronic health conditions. The kōrero of the whānau caregivers and their journey with health service providers indicated the struggle, courage, and resilience required to navigate their way through a system that is both alien and also familiar. Caregivers used narratives of a brave warrior and a navigator to personify their journey through the health system. This described the ways they accessed the resources they needed as whānau caregivers, the barriers they surmounted to engage, and the wisdoms gained along the way. Findings conclude that whānau experience the struggle that explain health inequities for Māori. Overall, the narratives reveal the experiences of struggle that help to explain health inequities within the health system of which whānau are under served. Health services engagement with whānau can be vastly improved through cultural diversification, culturally intuitive service delivery, wrap around support, and embracing whānau as possessing experts of their situation and the type of service they need.