This article explores the impact on whānau wellbeing following wāhine being transferred to either secondary or tertiary care hospitals to receive health care for themselves or their baby during the birthing journey. It was found that throughout this process, the wāhine and whānau faced a series of challenges that compromised their wellbeing. Feeling isolated from their home, support networks and baby, and not fulfilling their motherhood expectations were major challenges.

The Covid-19 lockdown over March to May 2020 meant households became their own “bubbles”, with residents physically interacting only with those in their household and staying close to home. Māori leaders recognised the potential of the lockdown to exacerbate whānau vulnerability due to confinement, financial hardship and, depending on their household, issues of crowding or isolation. Steps were quickly taken to support households with care packages, health care and social connectivity. This paper describes these initiatives as mahi aroha and argues that housing is a foundation from which Māori go out into the world and add meaning and quality to the lives of others.

The Annual Child Poverty Monitor reports on child poverty measures and child-poverty-related indicators. Around one in three Māori children are defined as living in poverty. While the Monitor is a prompt for government action to reduce child poverty, it has been criticised as presenting a negative view of the lives of Māori children and whānau. This paper considers whether a fuller picture of the lived realities of Māori children can be gained from routinely collected data, using a lens of tamariki Māori wellbeing. A mauri framing for the indicator set is proposed, with three components reflecting the ihi, wehi and wana of tamariki.

Māori wellbeing is the foundation of Māori development, yet Indigenous peoples (including Māori) are often invisible in universal measures of wellbeing. In 2006 Mason Durie outlined Māori-specific measures of wellbeing, built upon Māori understandings of what constitutes a “good life”. Following Durie this paper describes developments in the culturally responsive measurement of Māori wellbeing. These have culminated in Te Kupenga, the 2013 survey of Māori wellbeing by New Zealand Statistics, and two Māori mental wellbeing assessment tools, Hua Oranga and the Meihana Model.