The Minister for Whānau Ora says progress being made on the new service delivery model outweighs any minor problems with implementation.

Tariana Turia was quizzed by media yesterday about whether checks were in place to ensure Whānau Ora money was being properly spent, in the wake of a Dunedin gang member being jailed for using whānau ora grant money for a drug buy.

She says that was picked up by the system.

Mrs Turia says Whānau ora is giving providers better tools to engage with vulnerable families than previous models.

"It’s one thing to audit the processes and the financial management and those things and that are important what they don’t audit is the outcomes that have been achieved for the families, what has changed for them, what is going to save the government money in the long term or do you just want more of the same where you have outputs where you fund people to do 20 of this and 10 of that and it doesn’t matter if none of it works as long as they did the 10, 20 and the 30," she says.

Mrs Turia says Māori and Pacific Island providers have embraced Whānau Ora, but the mainstream government agencies have been slow to change their way of working.