Tū Māia 2023 - Mataatua Journey

Drax Kerr

Well, it started off of getting the nod from my colleagues and saying they should give it a go. But now I'm here for personal reasons. I enjoy the content, the talks, and also getting to know new people.

Hayley Hughes

I don't know exactly what I'm hoping to gain just yet. The experience in itself is a huge privilege. I do a lot of set ups of family homes and I think that we had historically and probably still now still got way too much focus on homes from a safety perspective as opposed to what a homely feeling should be and a sense of belonging in a home. So I would like to take more away that I can help to improve in that space.

 Varnze Ihaia

I suppose this was just to look at it like minded people getting together, especially from different sectors of Oranga Tamariki and coming to together as what the common goal of Te Ao Māori focussed and how do we navigate the world of Oranga Tamariki.

Rana Kapene – Paitai

To see how it enhances my practice and where I standin terms of my work with the community. Among whānau among the iwi, among the hapu and I guess had the confidence that I'm backed by my organisation, I’m backed by my colleagues and how I practice in terms of cultural capability working among our communities And I guess time will tell to see whether this programme going to pay off and change that.

Rangimokai Fruean

It’s really busy at Oranga Tamariki. I've worked in a lot of government Organisations as a social worker and working in this one with a legislation and probably everybody is looking at it it's really statutory social work as a specialist area of its own. It's your craft. It's like a craver, you know, you wouldn't have blunt chisels to go in and carve.

So same as social work. So, sharpen your tools.

Dee Gulliver

Being able to follow a journey a passion of somebody's desire to want to build themselves in Te Ao Māori. how that can support them in their practice within Oranga Tamariki is a real positive thing and is something that I'm actually quite passionate about.

[Waiata]

Rebecca Premadasa

First noho I really enjoyed the making of the connections.

So a lot of the, you know, some of the colleagues within the space I might have emailed or called on the phone and had conversations with, and it's just been a great opportunity to actually see them in person and to actually make a physical connection with them.

Definitely first impressions was really good when reflecting on the wānanga itself, probably just conceptualising Te Ao Māori into our everyday mahi within our organisation and, and our workplaces in terms of tikanga and how that aligns with how we support the rangatahi and also the whānau that we work with.

Adam Allington

And the last wānanga I felt particularly challenged around whether or not I could apply tikanga into practices in my day-to-day work compared to the people who are also at the wānanga who were obviously frontline and being from national office. I was just struggling a little bit to figure out, well, how does this apply to me? But slowly and through the reflections that the online portal I've been able to identify an example for for each one of the practices as to how that does apply.

Rana Kapene – Paitai

Again, my journal started off nice and tidy now it’s just a I just scribble everything down and put circles around it. So you can't expect Tu Māia to be a magic wand and change you. You have to actually do the Mahi and get in there and dig down deep as good as as deeply as you need to to to get your own earnings out of it.

[Kōrero]

I'm always a little bit trepid about like taking on people's teachings.

I really like the framework he put it in.The critical thinking how it affects change. So something I look at when I'm picking apart my my ways of thoughts.

Adam Allington

cognitive dissonance that they they often reconfirmed their own internal biases and don't challenge their own thinking. And so we have to be able to be willing to be a little bit disruptive to other people, but productive with it so that we can help break traditional thinking and move into different ways of working.

Rebecca Premadasa

I just think it's a wonderful experience. And if kaimahi within the organisation want to come on Tu Māia just make sure that you're talking to your managers about it.

Rana Kapene – Paitai

I think Tu Māia challenged my understanding of the values of our organisation and it's a challenge I'll take on after this and see where it ends because that’s a big undertaking to think about.

This learning journey for me has been about how I can be a better social worker, how I can be a better supervisor, how I can be a better person to uphold the mana of the rangatahi and tamariki and whānau that we work with.

Dee Gulliver

As one of the kaitoro matua I get the opportunity to travel to the different training hubs,

and I've seen some transformation in terms of the ākonga or the kaimahi. They taking those taonga of knowledge that we are sharing with them and not just to putting that to practice at Mahi, but in their own personal lives.

Rangimokai Fruean

It's okay to to ask and challenge. You know, you don't have to doesn't have to be. We're not, we're not having a war anymore. So, I do have hope here.

And this provides me hope because I know how to work with Māori but that's not what I'm here for I don't think I think I'm here for how we make the shift together so that we can hear our families.