Allan – Mount Albert.
“[Pride]; it’s not an emotion I feel a great deal of, or not consciously at least.
I’d probably have to dig back to maybe two or three years ago, to when the team that I was working with and was part of in a community mental health team achieved some really good outcomes in terms of managing risk, shall we say.
I grew up in Māngere East. I grew up in South Auckland. My family had been around the Ōtahuhu, South Auckland area since the 1860s. So that really does feel like my tūrangawaewae, if you like.
What makes me tick? Well, I have two grown children and a granddaughter, and another grandchild on the way. So, they enthuse me and keep me going a lot. A sense of wanting to work with people and the planet; the created parts of the planet that we haven’t destroyed yet, to actually make it sustainable for future generations.
I’m currently involved in turning our little eighth of an acre in Mount Albert into a food forest based on permaculture principles with the idea of actually reconnecting with the earth myself, but also with creating a sustainable food source for my family for the future, because I’m not 100 per cent convinced that the economic model that we have at the moment, and its ability to feed people, will be sustainable long term.
We put together a plan around a gentleman who had been incarcerated for most of his adult life, and the previous time he had been released from incarceration he’d only lasted for a very short period of time. So when we were given the brief on this gentleman in what we were hoping to do with him when he came out of incarceration this time, we put together a plan that actually worked and kept the man and everybody safe for, well let’s just say the gentleman’s still, even after a few hiccups, living in the community without harming anyone.
So that’s something that I was essentially very proud of; the fact that we managed to put together a really good plan and follow it through, despite resource constraints etcetera both within the DHB services and Corrections and all the other agencies that were involved.
We actually took what we had available and made a really good plan and it’s an ongoing process, because the gentleman’s still alive of course, and still living in the community. So who knows what could happen, but as far as I know things are still going really well based upon the plan we designed.
The recovery and healing [is] a big long ongoing journey. I guess it started before we became involved, because obviously within his incarceration he had gone through a number of programs. We were initially, and this is often the way with services unfortunately, given a brief that this gentleman was about to turn up on our patch, so to speak, within about two weeks, which would have been totally unsustainable because we wouldn’t have had time to build a relationship and set up a plan.
However, when he went before a parole board, the parole board turned down his release at that stage, and he was going to be incarcerated for another three months. So during that three months we had ample time to actually go and meet with him every week, work out what he actually wanted to do with the rest of his life, what made him tick, what support we felt he needed when he first came out, and during that period we built a plan, a cooperative and collaborative plan, because we worked alongside him in deciding where we would go, and what would happen.
We engaged with other agencies that could offer extra support, agencies we were already in contact with and had a relationship with, and then agencies that we made contact with through the correction service, and so by the time this gentleman actually was released into the community we already had a functioning relationship. We’d built trust.
We had a plan all set to go, including a lot of support around him from day one when he came back into the community, and we worked long extra hours to actually make sure that those relationships were maintained, that the support continued to be in place.
We worked alongside other agencies, especially Corrections, but we had a lot of interface between agencies, which sometimes doesn’t occur. There was a lot of information sharing in this particular case, which again often doesn’t occur between agencies, but we had the permission of the client, and everybody was working together I guess at a level that sometimes doesn’t happen, and unfortunately that’s where a lot of people, you hear that term, slipped between the cracks, when agencies aren’t working closely enough together.
So that’s something that I was proud of, in terms of my own self there, that is. I mean, I could look at all the little things my granddaughter does, you know, each step she takes along the way that I feel pride in, and her achievements, and those with my children as well, but I guess when you asked the question I was thinking what within my own sphere of activity did I feel proud of.
I think healthy relationships are about respecting the other person and treating people the way you want to be treated and that’s what I’ve tried to do in my own role-modelling to my children. Obviously telling them that you love them a lot. I think that’s a really important thing to do, and to share, and to touch. The embrace, the hugs, are really important tools I think in expressing emotion of how to be in a good relationship. I think that extends into community work and the community work that I’ve done.
Part of my role modelling for my children has been within the work that I’ve done, but also outside of that. Actually, if we’ve got extra, not selling it on TradeMe trying to make a buck of it, but donating it to St Vincent DePaul or the Salvation Army; taking food to food banks if we’ve got extra each time we shop; taking donations to the Salvation Army at the Christmas appeal. All those kinds of things where you reach out to your fellow community members and actually try to treat them the way you want to be treated.
I’m currently working with tertiary social work students, and today I’m going to be doing assessments with three of them while they’re on placement, which is part of why I’m in this neck of the woods today. I guess within that role I feel like that’s working towards humanity and Auckland’s improvement of its humanity, if you like.
These are people who are training to be social workers, social activists, social practitioners. [They] go out there and actually do work to assist and support with everything from our tāmariki through to our elderly services; all areas they’ll be working [in] to improve the lives and wellbeing and welfare of Aucklanders.
I’ll probably be babysitting my granddaughter this afternoon. She’s three and a half and we’ll more than likely go to a park, and just within the interaction there I guess I could smile at some of the people in my neighbourhood who don’t speak English that well and are new immigrants and reach out to them. Say hello, or ni hao, or, talofa. Whatever the language is that I think is appropriate that they’ll understand. So that’s me.
Both my wife and I actually grew up in very traditional families here in South Auckland where Dad worked [and] Mum raised children; all that kind of thing back in the old days. Whereas our relationship has always been a partnership, as we very much model a shared working, shared cooking, shared chores and activities that go with child-raising; keeping a house and bringing in an income.
We’ve always shared those roles right through our lives, and both of our children are in relationships where that is again how they operate, based upon our modelling. It’s just been part of the way that we’ve operated as a partnership, and my wife and I have now been together for 31 years in about two months.
So, I guess I am a sensitive new age guy; caring and understanding new age type. You’d probably put a label on me back in the day where we labelled things, but I’ve always been part of a partnership as opposed to any kind of power dynamic taking over in the relationship.”
