Best for
Lesson 9 follow-up, pastoral mentoring, transition meetings, or tutor time where students need a practical, low-drama sequence for what to do when concern signs persist.
Health / Hauora • Years 7-10 • Support planning with named next steps
Tautoko Help-Seeking Action Plan
Use this plan to help ākonga decide what they will notice, what they will try first, and which adults, spaces, and systems they will use when things stop feeling manageable. It turns “reach out if you need to” into a real pathway.
Free planning scaffold, premium value when schools need specificity
This page works as-is tomorrow. The premium workflow becomes useful when you want your dean, counsellor, hauora room, iwi provider, or house system built directly into the plan students take away.
- Insert your actual support adults, spaces, and follow-up process.
- Create a scenario-only or simplified version for safer participation.
- Save a tutor-group or mentor version to My Kete for ongoing use.
Kaiako planning snapshot
- Use length: 25-40 minutes, or shorter in mentoring and tutor contexts.
- Grouping: Individual planning with optional paired support and teacher check-ins.
- Prep: Have your named adults, spaces, and urgent support process visible before students complete this page.
- Teaching move: Help-seeking should read as a skilful routine, not as failure or drama.
Resources already provided
- Whole-whare warning-sign prompts
- First-steps action sequence
- Named-support mapping
- Sentence starters for asking for help
- Urgent support reminder
- Curriculum companion for planning and reporting
The page leaves room for kaiako to insert local supports because a real school pathway is more trustworthy than a generic list copied from the internet.
Ngā Whāinga Akoranga / Learning Intentions
- We are learning to identify warning signs across the whole whare.
- We are learning to plan practical first steps and trusted support options.
- We are learning to use clear, mana-enhancing help-seeking language.
Paearu Angitu / Success Criteria
- I can name warning signs that tell me or the scenario extra support is needed.
- I can identify who I would go to and what I would do first.
- I can explain the urgent pathway my school wants me to follow.
Curriculum integration / Te Marautanga alignment
The curriculum companion makes the self-management, help-seeking, and healthy-community links explicit so this handout supports classroom planning, conferencing, and reporting in Aotearoa schools.
Good help-seeking plans are short enough to remember
The strongest plan is not the one with the most services written on it. It is the one students can actually follow when mauri drops, stress rises, or concern signs keep repeating.
For some classes, that means completing this plan for a fictional tauira first, then personalising it later with kaiako support.
1. What tells me help is needed?
Taha Tinana
Taha Hinengaro
Taha Whānau
Taha Wairua
2. My first actions
| When I first notice the signs | If things are not easing | Who I tell next | How I will remember this plan |
|---|---|---|---|
3. Who and what supports me?
Trusted people at kura
Whānau or home supports
Safe spaces or routines
Community or professional supports
4. What could I say?
Quiet check-in
“Can I talk with you privately? Something has been feeling heavy and I need tautoko.”
Clearer ask
“These signs are not going away and I need an adult to help me work out the next step.”
Asking for company
“Can you come with me? I do not want to do this kōrero by myself.”
Write the words you are most likely to use:
5. If support becomes urgent
-
1
Tell a trusted adult straight away Use the adult, office, or support room your school has already named for urgent wellbeing concerns.
-
2
Stay with people Do not leave yourself or another person isolated when stronger support is needed.
-
3
Follow the urgent pathway Record your school's urgent support process here:
6. My follow-through commitment
Complete these two prompts
- The first person or place I will use is:
- The sign that tells me not to wait any longer is:
Ngā Whāinga Akoranga · Learning Intentions
- Identify trusted adults and peer supports who can help in different situations
- Name specific school and community support pathways relevant to my context
- Practise language for asking for help with clarity and mana
- Understand why help-seeking is a strength, not a weakness
Paearu Angitu · Success Criteria
- My plan names at least two trusted people with contact details or locations
- I have included both informal (whānau, friends) and formal (school, community) support
- I have written at least one sentence I could actually use to start a help-seeking conversation
- I can explain my plan to someone else and it makes sense to them
Hononga Marautanga · Curriculum Alignment
Health and Physical Education — Hauora
Level 3–4: Identify and describe the relationship between feelings, thoughts, and actions; develop strategies to maintain and enhance hauora across the four pou of Te Whare Tapa Whā; recognise the impact of connections and relationships on wellbeing.
Social Sciences — Tikanga ā-Iwi
Level 3–4: Understand how cultural practices and values shape identity and wellbeing; recognise the role of community and whānau in supporting individuals; explore how Indigenous frameworks offer ways of understanding health that are distinct from Western biomedical models.
Aronga Mātauranga Māori
In Māori tradition, seeking help from kaumātua, tohunga, or whānau was not weakness — it was the recognition that some problems belong to community, not just to individuals. The whakatauki Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini — my strength is not the strength of one, but the strength of many — captures this. A help-seeking plan that names real people and real places is a practical act of whanaungatanga: making visible the network of care that already exists around each ākonga.
Ngā Rauemi Tautoko · Support Materials
- Unit 8 Support Circle (unit-8-support-circle.html) — identify who is in your support network
- Unit 8 Support Pathways (unit-8-support-pathways.html) — school and community support map
- Unit 8 Concern Checklist (unit-8-concern-checklist.html) — notice what is going on before making a plan
- Unit 8 Whānau Conversation Card (unit-8-whanau-conversation-card.html) — talk through the plan with whānau
Tuhia ōu whakaaro · Write Your Thoughts
If something was really bothering you, who is the first person you would go to? What makes it easy (or hard) to go to them?