5 mins with Mike Brummitt
Kia ora, can you tell me about who you are and what you do?
My name is Mike Brummitt. I'm the Chief Executive of the Community Care Trust, Aotearoa which is a charitable trust that provides community-based supports across Te Waipounamu. I guess a significant part of what we do involves supporting tamariki and rangatahi who have often experienced considerable disruption, trauma, loss, disability, or fairly complex life circumstances. As an organisation we are focused on providing safe, stable, respectful, responsive supports and giving young people the best possible chance to heal, grow, belong and build a positive future.
How did you come to this work?
Like most people, rather than some sort of perfectly planned career path, I stumbled into the sector. Years ago, I had come back from travelling and I owed my dad a bit of money, so I started work at a residential school for the National Autistic Society in the southwest of England. At that time, I had very limited experience of disability or trauma and these were highly traumatised kids with highly specialised and complex needs. They had been put all together in deepest, darkest Devon, far away from their communities and families. And as a naive 20-year-old I found myself asking: is this the best solution? Is there nothing better? And I was really driven to try and improve their lot in life.
And now you find yourself leading an organisation with a very different approach. What is it about the work you do, that can be challenging, that keeps you going?
I think it’s a mixture of those big moments, like a young person getting a job or reconnecting with whānau, and smaller, quieter moments like when a young person first trusts an adult or asks for help for the first time.
We support young people with very high and complex needs, and they are normally coming to us at quite traumatic points in their lives. And that's reflected in how they respond to us, how they behave. And I think that one of the things that we do really well is that we're quite resilient around that.
How do you build that resilience?
One of the things that makes a real difference is that our teams are not asking what is wrong with this young person or why would that young person do that? But we ask what is happening, or has happened, for that young person? That question opens a much more proactive path focused on hope, what’s possible and what this young person needs from me. And that approach takes on a culture of its own which builds its own sense of resilience. The teams feel good about what they are doing, the young people thrive and you get a sort of virtuous cycle going on.
What's a life-changing lesson that you've learned through your mahi?
It comes back to resilience. If you can just hang on through difficult times – and I don't want to underestimate how difficult the mahi is - but if you can just continue to stay focused, then things get better for these young people and they get better exponentially.
From an organisational perspective, what's your greatest challenge professionally?
It’s trying to provide consistent, stable, high-quality relationships in systems that are under significant pressure and systems that continue to change. That lack of consistency is pretty challenging. And for young people who have experienced disability, consistency is not a nice extra. It's actually essential to the wellbeing of the person.
We are also talking about systems that don't always join up very well. Too often, systems are structured as though a young person has either a disability need, a mental health need, or an education need. In reality, many young people experience these needs together, and support needs to be joined up around the whole person.
What has your organisation done to adapt to some of those challenges?
I think everybody is continually adapting to their environment. We've really had to strengthen our focus on trauma-informed practices, positive behaviour support, safeguarding and staff training. And we’ve been strengthening relationships with Oranga Tamariki, whānau, housing and education providers. We're much more adept at bringing those resources together, as opposed to presuming it's going to happen by chance.
If you could get one wish granted to improve the lives of the young people you serve, what would it be?
It would probably be for every child or young person to have a stable, trusted adult around them for as long as it takes. All too often, we see young people who have nobody. A lot of the young people that we support need space to heal and grow, and they do that through relationships. We need systems that prioritise long-term relational stability, rather than short-term responses that keep changing around the young person. We need to rethink our systems so that young people can form really therapeutic, solid relationships and they can carry those relationships through with them.
Is there something that you wish the public understood better about the people that you're serving or the work that you do in your organisation?
In terms of the young people that we serve, there's still that public perception that some of these young people are difficult kids. But actually, these are young people that have probably had to manage situations that no young person should ever have to manage. And whilst their responses can be challenging, but it's a very small part of their story. These young people are talented, creative, resilient, and have so much potential.
In terms of our wider sector, I'd also like a greater understanding that this is skilled mahi. There’s a perception that anyone could be a support worker, but it’s highly skilled. It’s about building trust, understanding trauma, responding to high and complex needs, supporting identity and culture, being resilient, being creative; all those things. When that work is done, well, it can be life changing.
