About Te Kāika

Te Kāika was founded by Ōtākou Health Limited (OHL), a charity with a vision to bring low-cost healthcare and social services to Dunedin’s most vulnerable residents.

OHL created Te Kāika, a village of integrated services dedicated to a holistic approach to improving and maintaining whānau wellbeing. After opening in February 2018, Te Kāika signed up 900 patients in its first month of operation, which quickly grew to 2,000 patients.

Te Kāika is a kaupapa Māori organisation built on partnerships with Arai Te Uru Whare Hauora (that has since amalgamated with Te Kāika), the University of Otago, Te Rūnanga o Ōtākou, and Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu.

Today, Te Kāika is a well-known ‘one-stop health shop’ improving health and wellbeing outcomes for all whānau and community by making essential health, social, education, and employment services affordable and accessible across the wider Otago region.
With a mission of He Korowai Manaaki, or a cloak of care and support, Te Kāika takes a holistic approach to deliver a broad range of low-cost services that include but are not limited to; medical care, dental treatment, physiotherapy, outreach social services, exercise programmes, and appointments with our Ministry of Social Development caseworkers. Kaimahi work together with individuals, whānau and community to create personalised plans of care, support and development.

Te Kāika looks forward to accelerating its service delivery across the Otago region with a new Wellbeing Hub on the horizon of our Dunedin site. All Te Kāika Dunedin services will continue to operate as normal through-out the building process, and we look forward to expanding Te Kāika Ōamaru and Queenstown Mountain Lakes Medical into Wellbeing Hubs of their own.
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Our Mission

He Korowai Manaaki | A cloak of care and support

It’s our mission to provide wraparound health and social services support for whānau across Otago. We provide our patients and clients with access to essential services in a safe community environment that encourages independence and rakatirataka.

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Our Vision

Whānau Ora, Whānau Oraka | A healthy family is a well family

The Ngāi Tahu values of whanaungatanga, manaakitanga, tohutanga, kaitiakitanga, tikanga, and rangatiratanga connect the framework of Te Kāika to the iwi through acknowledge and implementing the values into the organisation’s service. These values underlie the importance placed on supporting connections, caring for each other, accessing experts to support whānau aspirations, caring for whenua, resources, culture, and the future of mokopuna. All of these values ensure that the organisation keeps Ngāi Tahu ways of being and doing at the front of all work and drawing on the integrity and ethics in all services provided.

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Our Future

The future of Te Kāika

Te Kāika looks forward to the future with great promise as our Dunedin build for the new Wellbeing Hub progresses. The hub, which is being established in a new building constructed on Te Kāika grounds, will offer access to Southern District Health Board mental health services and outpatient clinics for a range of services. While we welcome our staff and clients into this new space in 2024, we will continue to operate existing healthcare and social services as normal throughout 2023. We are also excited to see existing Te Kāika medical practices and healthcare services in Queenstown and Ōamaru expand into Te Kāika Wellbeing Hubs of their own. The Otago service hub will allow us to expand our service delivery across the region.