Te Kahu Tōī: Intensive Wraparound Service

Female Participant: How long have we got?

Female Participant: How long's a piece of string?

Female Participant: I really need to know.

Female Participant: Where's Derek? I spoke to him when he was having a cuppa and said to him, [indistinct 00.11]

[indistinct conversation 0.11 to 00.21]

David: How familiar are the group with the song?

Female Participant: [indistinct 00.22]

David: Oh, so we're just gonna run it through it. Okay. I haven’t sung this [indistinct 00.30] Okay. Kia ora everyone. Kia ora. Te Pane o Mataohu. Ah, Te Moananui-a-Kiwa te moana. Ko Derek tōku ingoa. And I don’t work for the Ministry of Education. [laughter] I’ve, ah, been called in just to, um, tautoko with the mahi or the waiata today. So what we’ll do is we’ll just sing it. I think there’s lyrics there if you [indistinct 00.54] Toru, whā.

[All sing:]

Kei te pou tapu

Te wānanga o Rongo

Kei te pou tangata …

Female Participant: Ah so the waiata, of course, was, ah, created in Parihaka. That was back in 2019.

Female Participant: We were honoured to be invited to Parihaka, and we wrote all of the words that we had that we thought summed up the spirit of Te Kahu Tōī. The intention was to bring those words, put them in the bus when we went down the Coast and went onto Parihaka, and we gave them to Tonga Karina, who was one of our hosts.

Male Participant: The waiata is capturing what we're trying to do, which is be that that, that, um, Kahu Tōī, that cloak of support, ah, for the kids and their families. It's, um, highlighting the, the love they deserve, the support they deserve.

…. Mō te tamaiti

Female Participant: [indistinct 2.18] [laughter]

Male Participant: Um, listen, that was good, but it felt like halfway through that kind of dropped out badly. I think when you sing, drive it from your belly.

Female Participant: Parihaka symbolised, as we know, um, passive resistance and being quite a key symbolic ar-, um, movement for Aotearoa.

Female Participant: The example of the children bringing bread to soldiers who were there to encircle, entrap and terrorise their people, but giving them bread in the face of that and how powerful an example that is, when actually you want - may want to return an eye for an eye. No, you lead by example. So the whole waiata is about weaving those strands of Te Kahu Tōī, ah, and weaving them in a way that embodies that spirit of peaceful resistance.

Male Participant: Can I just suggest something? Um, so my mum, she's a kaikaranga. She said, it’s not te pou tapu – it’s [indistinct 3.20] - just for everyone's pronunciation. So let's do that again and we'll just stay on tune and just really drive the pronunciation in the words.

Kei te pou tapu

Female Participant: That song, Te Kahu Tōī, our waiata, just has so many layers of meaning.

Male Participant: Kind of like giving us the support and the moral authority, if you like, empowerment to work for these kids and, um, to persist and to do it in a peaceful way.

Female Participant: To walk in their shoes and to ask ourselves every time we walk into the whare of a family, how much am I putting energy into walking in their shoes if they’re Māori? Because they’re gonna have to be putting a lot of energy all of the time, out of necessity, to walk in your shoes - speaking to us Pākehā.

Kei te pou tapu

Te wānanga o Rongo …

Male Participant:

There's a saying – well, ah, it’s a whakataukī that we sometimes use in the service that goes, ah, “mauri ako ako paenga. Waiho ko oka wheru” which is, ‘Recognise my strengths and look past my weaknesses.’ So we try to work in a strengths-based way.

Female Participant: So that's where the waiata comes from, is that weaving the strains of the strengths of survival into a plan, and that takes time, persistence, but also kind of a patience.

Male Participant: We work in that way where we're trying to help kids, ah, fulfil their potential.

[indistinct 5.18]

Male Participant: Oh, you mean a key change.

Female Participant: Yeah.

Male Participant: And really think about the lyrics that we're saying, because, like, you're talking about tamariki. Especially when I think about when I was at Parihaka, this wasn't just anyone teaching the song, was like, quite, it was quite significant. So yeah, let's just drive it a little bit more and a little bit harder.

Male Participant: Persistence always, always wins in the end.

Male Participant: Louder.

Kei te pou tapu.

Male Participant: That simple word just, you know, encourages us to, to stick by the kids. We know that there will be ups and downs in the [TIMECODE 6.00] period of service, that people will ask awkward questions around, um, you know, can't you do this faster [laughs] or, ah, can't you force things to happen – ah, but you can't. So we always go back to this peaceful and, and persistent way of working with the kids, so yeah, understanding how things look from them and understanding how things need to change.

Female Participant: I'm talking with my facilitators and psychologists about, okay, so how have you involved the team in that decision? How has the family had a voice in that? Where's the child?

Male Participant: You know, people might not look at them as children with needs, ah, but they are. They, they are very precious, and the, the waiata highlights that, and it highlights the approach that's needed to support them - because they live in a very hazardous world.

Toru wha.

Kei te pou tapu….

Female Participant: And these are kids that people have written off and you don't know what's in their future. And that waiata is about just doing your best for the time you have with them. It's just pride, really, being able to sing it and to hold on to that hope that you’re trying to bring into people’s homes.

Te pou o te oranga

E Rongo e āio

Male Participant: This is the first job I've had where I've, I’ve thought, we are making a difference here. So - and the difference is often in that the - we encourage the families and the kids to dream about what they would like to do, what they feel they need to do.

Kei te pou tapu….

Male Participant: We construct these bespoke plans that are unique to the aspirations and the situations right then and there, um, and we convert that into tangible outcomes for them.

Te pou o te oranga

E Rongo e āio

Female Participant: There’s strength in unity, and as we were singing, you could really sense that wairua. It's almost as if we were back in Parihaka and singing that waiata for the first time.

Mō te tamaiti

Female Participant: It’s got a funky tune, but it’s really – it's got us – us as a team that really cares.

Mō te tamaiti

Kei te pou tapu

Te wānanga o Rongo

Kei te pou tangata

Te pou o te oranga

E Rongo e āio

Whakamaua Te Kahu Tōī

Mō te tamaiti

Here is the sacred foundation

The teaching of peace

Here is the foundation for the people

The foundation of wellbeing

Experience peace and calmness through rongo

Weave the difficult strands of the Tōī to enhance life

For the child

(Repeat from the beginning x2)

David: When we started Te Kahu Tōī, people told us we could never do this. They said, ‘You're working with the toughest kids in New Zealand. Most of them are going to be Māori…’ – and they are – “… and you’re not going to get the outcomes that you need.” We just proved we can do that when you have a system that you can resource to the needs rather than to a formula.

Female Participant: Tēnā koutou katoa. It gives me great honour to introduce our rangatira who, by trying, he has succeeded in creating a service that really cares and provides a hope and environment for all of you to actually genuinely care, and as he’s always telling us, ‘to do what it takes.’ [applause]

David: [Te reo 1.20 to 1.24] Haere, haere, haere. When we first started wraparound, it was mainly Pākehā. Look at our room now. We've got a good cross-section, a diverse group, and that's because wraparound, it's holistic and it's ecological at its base. And those things really, really suit a wide, diverse community, particularly Māori.

David: The wraparound process always starts with consultation and asking what the family want, and the young person. So you start off with the child and they’re the, the centre of our intervention. The next most important aspect is the whānau, and so you wrap the whānau around. Then in the educational context, we move to the classroom teacher and make sure the programme is geared towards helping them with their education programme. And then within the school, how they’re going within the school. So if it's a child with behavioural problems, you’ll say, we have to have a little bit of tolerance. The usual school rules aren't going to work for this student, so we're doing something different. It's not that we're not doing something - we're just doing it a little bit differently. Then how did they go within their community? So what is it we need to do with that to help them be successful citizens within that community?

David: Okay. I'm really interested to hear how you got on with Colin.

Female Participant: Yeah, he's, he's just changed, oh, across everything. At the start of Te Kahu Tōī, he was in fights; he was in trouble in the community. He'd seriously assaulted and hurt another child. He was starting fires in the community. So there was a lot of Police involvement and he was in a really bad space. Um, he was stood down, um, and suspended from school several times and redirected back. So school, he was completely disengaged.

David: And the young people come to us. Um, over 60% of them are not engaged in school.

Female Participant: His relationships at home were really fraught. Mum was really scared of him at that point because, ah, his escalations and rages at home were just incredible. So across every area he was struggling, but now the, the changes are just amazing.

Female Participant: Because of the specific goals that were developed, it was his voice that really drove those. We were calling on him to rate some of those specific goals, so that helped him to see, you know, where he was heading.

David: Listening to what children want is a real critical part of Te Kahu Tōī. Um, also the whānau, but we need to first listen to the young person themselves.

Female Participant: We adapted that, um, IWS plan for him based on his feedback. So there were lots of 10 steps forward, two steps back. But we kept his voice central to that, to that process so that, um, yeah, he was the driver of tr-, of the change that that he wanted.

David: So, you know, some people say that if you let Colin drive that, you'll go backwards and forwards. But, but the best thing about that is that he owns that, that stuff. If someone else does it for me, he may not own it. So I guess that's the best outcome in the long term – it just takes a little bit longer.

David: Some young people come out with a hell of a lot different priorities than the adults have got, and it's really important to listen to that. It might be that their priority is to have kids come to their - other kids come to their birthday party, for example. Seemingly quite a minor thing for many adults, but for young people, that can be one of the most important things in their life.

David: The children's best interests must be our first concern, and then that the family must be. Next to that we have the kid in the middle and the family second, and goodness me, the United Nations agrees with us.

David: So the, um, individual data shows improvement. Um, can you just tell us a little bit about that? What – you know, you’ve measured that.

Female Participant: Yeah.

David: So what, what did you find out over the time?

Female Participant: Yeah. So when we, when we started working with Colin, um, everything for the life predictors, he was in the reds for - across all areas for self-control, attitudes, relationships, how he was doing in the external environments and things. So….

David: And the red being really highly at risk?

Female Participant: Red band, yeah. He was the ones, he was at the ones highly risk - risk across all areas.

David: Once we get the young person, we have a look at how they’re going against those, ah, five critical areas, um, of - for their future development that came from the Dunedin longitudinal study. We need to know, um, how well they can, they control themselves – self-control. Um, we need, we need to assess that level and it's often very low.

Female Participant: And then what we saw after a year, he'd made movements. Some were still in the orange, somewhere in the yellows, but we definitely made some movements. We found at, at around about a year, um, Colin went through a bit of a, a low point again with his mental wellbeing, but he came and actively sought help for that. And after that, there was just a real steady increase in, in across all areas. And in the end we were in the yellows and in some areas in the greens, which was, which was just brilliant.

David: We look at whether they're engaging in a safe environment. Because, you know, if they're engaging in unsafe environments, literally anything can go wrong.

David: I see the attitude and perception and values took a little bit longer to establish. Can you tell us about that?

Female Participant: I think he'd heard so much about him being the bad kid that he'd taken on that persona really to every extent. And, and, he, he felt very guilty about what he was doing. And also because he'd gone through various trauma as a child and adverse experiences, I think he'd just taken all that on. So it was very hard to shift that, um, lack of self-belief or self-worth. And he'd never been able to learn. He'd not had success in the school setting. So across the board, he, he had just not experienced much success in his life.

David: This is not easy to do. It's not easy for the young person. It's not easy for anyone within Russian doll. It is not a cotton wool programme, but it's a programme that focuses on strengths and building on those strengths, focuses on building skills that will last them, you know, right now, next month, next year, and when they move into adult life. And if you work with that, even if you don't get instant success, you're more likely to get success later on.

Female Participant: So, um, making – you know coming to the meetings, hearing the celebrations at the start was a massive thing for him because people were saying good things about him, you know, and he was hearing all the positive stuff. And then each success within the On Track or with his mentors or, or whatever he was doing as part of the Te Kahu Tōī, um, plan, each success, I think, brought a little bit more belief in himself.

David: Most of our kids get told of their weaknesses day in and day out. So one of the challenges for the psychologist and, and also for the facilitator is to find those strengths, identify them, celebrate them, make them up there as important, and in many cases, more important, than what might be perceived as a weakness, because it’s a strength that will bring them through. And when people start celebrating those things, rather than only focusing on what they can't do, they get - they feel better about themselves and they, they work harder.

David: The theory of change is building family assets. And as soon as you improve the assets of a family or the skill set of the individual, you increase their chances to be successful later on. Man, this is not rocket science, but how come we can't get our head around that in New Zealand? Why is it we're so hell-bent on resources and not on improving assets, improving people's ability to solve problems going forward?

Female Participant: You know, this is a family where there is significant mental health, so it's about taking the time to connect with them. So mum, while she goes to work, that was the only place that she went out to in the community. She would come home after that and that was her place of safety. Um, her daughter - quite similar to Colin. The only way that she could go out in the community was with the security of her boyfriend at the time.

David: Right.

Female Participant: So they would do the shopping together. And then we've got Colin, who is highly anxious to begin with. Um, throughout the IWS process, his, um, his wellbeing was addressed, but it was about his choice at what point he went and actually sought medical intervention for that. Mum, now, and I think with the improvement for Colin, you know, the outcomes for Colin, she's got a lot more confidence. She's the one that goes out shopping now.

David: Mm.

Female Participant: So yeah.

David: So you may get a generational change?

Female Participant: Could be. Could well be.

David: Trudy, how did you manage to get professional help for the, ah, mental health issues to do with Colin?

Trudi Jordan: We did a referral to CAMHS crisis line. Um, they said that it was going to take a little while to come on board, so I wrote a letter of support that mum took with Colin to the doctors and they got some immediate sort of, um…

David: Fantastic. Fantastic.

Trudy:  …medicine.

David: Yeah. We can hire a psychiatrist or psychologist or occupational therapist or speech language therapist because you've got flexibility with money.

David: So not only do we need to provide an individual programme, we need to make sure that that program matches the needs of the whānau and the young person that you're working with.

David: If you take an equity position, it is unequal resourcing because there's unequal need. In other words, some students need $5,000 and some students need $105,000, depending on their needs. You can't give them all the same amount of money. You've got to have a system that's flexible enough to give the 5,000 or the 105,000. You need to make sure that you don't start saying, well, there's not enough money, so we'll just do a little bit of this, a little bit of that - because as soon as you do that, you won't get the outcomes that you need.

David: If you read the Treaty, we guaranteed that we would protect Māori. We did a number of other things. There's the participation, but Article 3 talked about protection. That protection was to protect Māori from underachieving.

David: You have to have the heart for making sure that you're able to be flexible to meet the needs of a young person and a particular culture. If you take it for Māori, you really have to honour the Treaty, and to do that, you need to have the heart to say that under the Article 3 of the protection you're just not going to accept that Māori aren't going to do as well as Non-Māori. And as soon as you make that decision, you're able to resource for that need rather than, um, giving everyone the same, the same support. Cos support will be different depending on what those, ah, Māori students need and their whānau need.

David: It's about the process, it's about individuals and it's about whānau, and you get the outcomes and those outcomes are fantastic, and what's more, we have unbelievable data to prove it. And the national data shows us that we make sure young people are twice as able to be successful than what they were before they started. I wanna know, are Māori doing as well as anyone else? Are Māori still in school. Because that's my obligation as a public servant.

David: So data is very critical for the implementation. It's not just valuable to say, oh, we've been successful. It's very valuable for making sure the practitioners, the specialists, can see how they're going compared to others.

David: We've got to find a pro-social pathway. So within a whānau, you need to make sure that you find a pro-social pathway for that young person, because it can make the difference for them in the future.

David: The opposite to what we do is to take the young person and remove them out of this context, um, and move them over to a separate group or a separate provider. Um, and that means that all these things here are away from the young person, um, and if these people here have got the same needs as the child, they’re creating almost an academy or a learning point where they learn more inappropriate behaviour. Because the models they're picking up here are not dissimilar to them. Whereas in this context, you've got a full range of models, full range of skills and ability, temperaments, personalities, you name it. And so if a young person in this context does something completely anti-social or aggressive, um, negative, these people here are likely to, um, moderate that and say, ‘Hey, don't do that, Hone, that's not a good idea.’ In this context, it’s far more acceptable to do extreme behaviour or anti-social behaviour because other people have got the same set of behaviours. So if you're going to be successful in the medium to long term, you need to provide the support within, um, a natural context, a holistic approach around the young person, not an artificial basis of removal.

David: So some of you are working with some quite challenging kids, some violent kids. And I got a letter a few weeks ago from some grandparents, and they were thanking me for our team sticking with their son while he’s in lock-up, while he's in prison. He killed someone. And she was saying just how important it is.

David: We cannot walk away from our young people when they need us most.

David: As with, with all kids, the, these kids let us down. You get them on the right pathway and something goes wrong. It can be something as simple as the households having the power switched off because they've run out of money that flips it over. What you mustn't do is walk away when that happens. You've got to say, well, they need me now more than they've ever needed me, and I'll be available. We'll never give up. We'll never walk away from you. We never say no to who we pick up. We never say no to the highest needs. Some, some students don't get our service because their needs aren’t big enough, but they never not get our service because it's too big. So they can have the most pressing needs you could ever imagine – like they've just killed someone - and we will still take them on.

Q: Why do you do it?

David: Well, because they need us. That's when they need us most. And if you walk away from people when they need you most, what hope have they got? When we can demonstrate we've been highly successful, I find that really gratifying. I've kind of gone through a whole career waiting to be able to do that, and finally we were able to do it.

Kei te pou tapu, Te wānanga o Rongo.

Lisa: Te Kahu Tōī is an evidence-based wraparound service. It was developed for Aotearoa New Zealand in conjunction with the University of Victoria Wellington.

We use 10 principles of practice, and how we work with families is how we work with each other as professionals. That's why we can say we're doing wraparound.

[Musical interlude 00.38 to 00.48]

Lisa: Facilitators guide the process and are at the heart of what we do. And just as they keep the family at the centre, they encourage effort and empathy from the team.

Kiriana: When I meet a family, they've had a lot of people around them…

Lisa: Mm.

Kiriana: … and they're quite lost in the sea of people that have been around them - sometimes for quite a long time.

Lisa: Yeah.

Kiriana: Um, their voices are lost, they're lost, they're not sure. So for me, I come in and I try to help them clarify what it is…

Lisa: Mm.

Kiriana: …what it is that they want to do. And then I help facilitate our process with the team. But I'm here to help families understand who you are, what it is you can bring to this team…

Lisa: Mm.

Kiriana: …and how you're going to do that.

Lisa: Mm.

Kiriana: And then as a team, I help the families clarify that, collect all that information and put it [TIMECODE 2.00] into one plan.

Lisa: That’s a, um, very abstract thing for families who have experienced services coming in and out.

Kiriana: Mm.

Lisa: I suppose your experience with your daughter…

Kiriana: Yeah.

Lisa: …has helped you really understand the practicalities of lots of people all coordinating.

Kiriana: Mm.

Lisa: What do you, what do you think Te Kahu Tōī does differently?

Kiriana: With my daughter, um, after her accident at a young age, I spent probably the first two years – we had a lot of people suddenly arrive in our lives. Um, not only were we dealing with our own trauma and the impact it was having on us personally….

Lisa: Yeah.

Kiriana: … um, but suddenly all these people who were coming in to support us,

I spent a long time every week ringing people. ‘Who are you?’ ‘Oh yeah, that’s right.’ ‘What are you doing again, and when are you gonna do it?’

Lisa: Mm hm.

Kiriana: If I had Te Kahu Tōī…

Lisa: Yeah.

Kiriana: .. that would have helped me so much, because I had – like, honestly, I had probably six different plans that I was having to try and work out and keep track of.

Lisa: Right.

Kiriana: Whereas Te Kahu Tōī, that’s what we do, for the families.

Lisa: How does that impact the work that you do with teams and families?

Kiriana: Um, it’s, it’s a very much I have to keep reminding teams and families that we are not ‘instead of’.

Lisa: Yeah.

Kiriana: We are not instead of team members. We’re an addition to the team and we are here to help the team work out that one plan…

Lisa: Mm.

Kiriana: …and progress that one plan for this family, and the outcome of that. You can see the success and the progression really clearly.

Lisa: Mm.

Kiriana: When the teams [TIMECODE 4.00] start being on the same page, following the plan….

Lisa: Mm.

Kiriana: … progressing the plan and as a facilitator, I’m just facilitating that process.

Lisa: Yeah.

Kiriana: And to hand those reins over to the family, so that when IWS or Te Kahu Tōī aren’t in their lives anymore, they’re doing it.

Lisa: The other side of it is helping practitioners remember the decisions that we make are not ones we’re gonna have to live by – families are, and children are.

Kiriana: Yes. So the ownership, um, of being responsible as a team member to the family.

Lisa: Yeah.

Kiriana: And so we just help the teams to actually find that clarity and find that pathway…

Lisa: Mm.

Kiriana: … or pathways. There’s usually more than one. [laughs]

Lisa: Yeah. So it’s more that systemic approach. Okay, so we’ll address that short-term, but we’ll do some medium term planning so that we’ll have some long-term outcomes. And then just coming back in, being at peace with the fact that there’s never a fix – it’s always a process.

Kiriana: It’s lifelong.

Lisa: Mm.

Kiriana: And people continually change. Lives continually change.

Lisa: Yeah. [Music in background] So while facilitators guide the process, psychologists partner with families and professionals to problem solve. They help teams learn how things can be different. Most importantly, they provide evidence to tamaiti, to whānau, that life can be worth living.

Kahu: Part of the role of the psychologist is to be strength-based…

Lisa: Mm.

Kahu: … and to be child-focused and to go back, always go back [TIMECODE 6.00] to those principles.

Lisa: What do you bring to a family?

Kahu: Well, depending on the culture of the family. So if I’m working with a Māori whā-, whānau, one thing that I know about Māori, because I am Māori, is that they like to see someone standing at their door that looks like them. And it’s not bringing that right forward in their faces – it’s about the way that you behave.

Lisa: Mm hm.

Kahu: So it’s in all those behaviours when you first met. So having an awareness of what’s required culturally from the families that you work with. For Māori, it’s really important to be able to build relationship, so whakawhanaungatanga, and I don’t say to whānau, ‘Right, now we’re going to do some whakawhanaungatanga.’

Lisa: Yeah.

Kahu: I will do that in the way that I – my actions – I am with you.

Lisa: Mm.

Kahu: So I’ll mihi to them, but, but Māori are diverse as well, so….

Lisa: Mm.

Kahu: … you know, colonised, and urbanised.

Lisa: Mm.

Kahu: Um, and they’re the ones that explicitly tell me – explicitly, but implicitly through their actions…

Lisa: Yeah.

Kahu: … how they define themselves as Māori. So you know, I’ll mihi. I’ll just say, ‘Kia ora,’ you know, ‘I’m Kahu. I’m from Te Kahu Tōī. I’m the psychologist. That sounds like a very fancy name, but actually what my job is, is to hear your voice and to support you in any way that I can around the principles of Wraparound.’

Lisa: Mm.

Kahu: So it’s still principle-focus and it’s cultural, culturally-focussed as well. [TIMECODE 8.00]

Lisa: Yeah, for every family.

Kahu: For every family. 

Lisa: How do you help the team here see – feel about the child that is the so-called problem?

Kahu: If we get too focussed on the problem, we won’t find the answers in the problem. The problem is the problem. They’re not the solutions.

Lisa: Yeah.

Kahu: So let’s look at times when they saw that tamaiti, you know, following instructions or being helpful or being that leader.

Lisa: Part of my role is helping people understand the team effort that's required to actually do wrap around properly. And one of the questions they have is what's the role of the psychologist? We've already got a psychologist from learning support. We've already got a CAMHS psychologist. We've got a report from the Courts. What do we need another one for?

Kahu: It may take time for the team to decide what my role is, but my focus is whānau voice and choice. And when I say whānau, that includes the tamariki or the rangatahi involved. And so even in just that little piece of work, is actually, if you're doing it in-depth…

Lisa: Mm.

Kahu: … because you're getting to know the whānau, you're getting to know the, the tamaiti, the rangatahi, that takes time, and particularly if you're working with Māori whānau.

Lisa: Mm.

Kahu: And yes, those other psychologists are part of the team, but they have their focus. So they've come into the Te Kahu Tōī process with a focus.

Lisa: Yeah.

Kahu: And so my role as to ensure that that focus plus mine [TIMECODE 10.00] is wrapping around and everyone else that's involved, is wrapping around that whānau.

Lisa: Yeah. What I hear and what I see in your practice within teams and with our facilitators is, is like a community psychology combined with a therapy psychology. So you're using your words and your body to help people hear each other in a different way.

Kahu: Mm. Even though I do do, you know, clinical work in a therapy room, I'm bringing that into my team work as well, and I'm bringing that with whānau as well.

Lisa: Yeah.

Kahu: So noticing - you know, noticing the trauma and how you respond to that. So if whānau are saying, you know, school don't understand us or health don't understand us, then really unpacking with the whānau what that means and what would help them. What would help? What do they need…

Lisa: Mm hm.

Kahu: … for those services?. So really working in that therapeutic way with the whānau to help them understand that this is a problem, but we can find solutions for it - and solutions that fit with them and then advocating for that in the team hui. Because sometimes whānau, you know, they, they might say this on the side, but find it hard to say it in team…

Lisa: Mm.

Kahu: … in team hui. So being able to put that to the team in a way that's palatable to the team. Now that takes some skill too, because sometimes you need to be a disrupter. [mild laugh] And I thought this is the, the breadth of the work as a psychologist. You know, you need to decide when you're an advocate. [TIMECODE 12.00] You need to decide when you're a, a peacemaker and…

Lisa: Mm hm.

Kahu: you know, smoothing over things. You need to decide when you're going to just rock the boat a little bit.

Lisa: That brings me to the point of the role of data. I mean, people talk about evidence-based a lot. And I think in wraparound, we have evidence that the framework works. But inside each and every team, there's a different kind of evidence being gathered, checked against reality…

Kahu: Mm hm.

Lisa: …against practicality, and then brought back to the team again. How do you know what you know? Because we're here in a place with the most complex kids and we've had the best of, ah, services.

Kahu: How do we know it's working?

Lisa: Yeah.

Kahu: Well, the, the, the data tells us whether it's working or not.

Lisa: Mm.

Kahu: So if we've got an intervention, yes, we are collecting data. We have to collect it. You can't not collect it…

Lisa: Yeah.

Kahu: …because how do you know it's working or not?

Lisa: But a lot of teams would be, ‘we're working on this. This is, this is our data.’ Whereas in a wraparound, it's our [indistinct 13.11]…

Kahu: Well it needs to be shared.

Lisa: Yeah.

Kahu: Yeah. You know, if - and this does happen in teams – um, when we have asked people to collect information and data and to do it in a very simple way…

Lisa: Mm.

Kahu: …it's very difficult for them - really, really hard for people. Having said that, though, this is part of the team, and it's not just my problem.

Lisa: Yeah.

Kahu: So if we come back to the team and say, you know, this is what, this is what the goal was, this is what we said we’d do, um, this is how we said we’d know if it was working or not…

Lisa: Yeah.

Kahu: …where are we up to with that? How's that going?

Lisa: Yeah.

Kahu: You know, just being able to [TIMECODE 14.00] simply put that on the table.

Lisa: Yeah.

Kahu: Because the data never lies.

Lisa: Yeah, yeah.

Kahu: Yeah? So it doesn't become a blame thing…

Lisa: Yeah.

Kahu: … on people.

Lisa: Yeah.

Kahu: It’s just that this is what the data is telling us. So what do we have to do differently?

Lisa: Yeah.

Kahu: You know, if, if we don't have the data that we want, what's happening?

Lisa: Mm.

Kahu: Is this not the right intervention? Do we need to tweak it?

Lisa: Yeah.

Kahu: Is this not the right way of collecting data? Do we have to work out something different?

Lisa: And for me, when I look at your, um, outcome data and you come to me with issues with, with Kiriana and we're thinking, oh, we're back to square one…

Kahu: Mm.

Lisa: … we can always go back to that, and we can remind ourselves: that's a significant change. There's stability for the first time, and that stability has lasted for three months. And that's never been the case for the last nine years. It's a big thing.

Kahu: And that is a big thing, and I think sometimes when you're in it, it's hard to see it. So it's really good to get that feedback from you, because, you know, just that fresh pair of eyes saying this to us about, well, actually, you know, this hasn't happened for two or three years, you know, this level of stability.

Lisa: We don't replace the professionals that are already involved. What we do is we help them become the family's wraparound team. In order to do that well, we have to constantly review what we bring to that process.

Kiriana: Initially, um, most teams expect us to come in and fix it, whatever it is.

Lisa: That could be really disappointing if you think that's what Te Kahu Tōī is going to do.

Kiriana: Yeah. Te Kahu Tōī is about [TIMECODE 16.00] reframing what's been happening for the child and the family up until that point, reframing the team and the team's perspective of the child and family, and creating that family story for the team to work from…

Lisa: Mm hm.

Kiriana: … and then working out what those underlying needs are for the family and the child…

Lisa: Mm.

Kiriana: … and how we can support them as a team.

Kahu: And I think that can be easily explained through our process. So I would be expecting all sorts of expectations and some – not – well, most of them aren't in line with what we can actually do. So from my perspective as the psychologist, it's good to know what they are. So we'll ask them, what's your expectation? They'll say, and we can then say, ‘Well, thanks,’ because this is actually what we do do.

Lisa: Mm hm.

Kahu: And Kiriana and I am not Te Kahu Tōī team. We are part of your team and we will wrap around your team and your voice around what you say you need.

Lisa: Mm.

Kahu: So we're aligning. You know, it's a process of aligning…

Lisa: Yeah.

Kahu: … expectations and that can take time. Often it's not one conversation, you know….

Lisa: Mm.

Kahu: … but usually we try to do that whole myth-busting thing in the first… But it's a repetition, too, of ‘Remember, Kiriana and I, and not just the team. The team’s your existing team that you've already worked with.’

Lisa: How do you deal with the resource question.

Kiriana: Hang on, the resource question?

Lisa: Yeah, I imagine people come to you as the facilitator a lot.

Kiriana: I un-, I unpack it [TIMECODE 18.00] a lot. So I say, okay, so you've come to me and you’ve said, um, ‘Can we get a computer?’ or something. First of all, I’ll say, I'll add it to the team meeting agenda because it's actually a team process. We don't, um, make decisions without our team…

Lisa: Mm.

Kiriana: … um, because, you know, our families have had that since before we came along, and that's what….

Lisa: Yeah, ‘Nothing about us without us.’

Kiriana: Exactly. So, um, bring it to the team and then we unpack that and go, okay, so what's, what's the need here? Is it the computer or is it perhaps, um, that the child is needing some educational support of something?

Lisa: Mm.

Kiriana: It might not be a computer, but it might be something else.

Lisa: Yeah. Problem solving.

Kahu: Problem-solving, mm, and here's the rationale. And here's the underlying need; here’s the rationale; here’s the action.

Lisa: See, this is, this is why our conversations are really important. Because as you do that modelling and that work with the teams, I get a different layer of communication, and – but it's the same kind of message. You know, ‘Why don't you do our work? We'll leave.’ And I'm like, ‘Well, if you go, there's no team. It's just us and the family again.’

Kahu: Mm.

Lisa: That's not wraparound.

Kiriana: Mm, no.

Lisa: So I'm really glad that we've had that conversation today, because us being on the same page means that I can back you up by helping people that are inside your team member’s systems understand what an opportunity it is, what a natural form of professional development it is to be in a place where you can [TIMECODE 20.00] actually do something different. I mean, I remember being a practitioner, dreaming of being able to do things for families, but not being able to because that agency didn't do work like that.

Kiriana: Mm.

Lisa: Whilst wraparound is an evidence-based process, our job is to provide proof for each child and each whānau that they have the skills to realise their goals, to live their lives well.

ENDS 20.30

Recording ENDS 20.50