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So wrote James Cherrington in his master's thesis, which has set him on a road he himself never dreamed of in his former life working long shifts as a security guard at Oranga Tamariki in Palmerston North.

When James began his Bachelor of Social Work at Massey, he had no internet at home and precious little computer knowledge.

A decade later, he is working on his PhD, fitting his writing into evenings and weekends around his full-time work as a kaiwhakaaraara (Whānau Ora navigator) and his responsibilities as a dad. Kaiwhakaaraara is a title only used by Whānau Ora navigators in the Manawatū, where James lives and works. It translates as "person doing awakening".

James Cherrington’s study journey

When James graduated with his degree, he went straight into his job as a kaiwhakaaraara, a role very few people knew about, he says. That inspired his master’s thesis, which was about providing a wider audience with insight into what a kaiwhakaaraara does and how.

Te Ara Whānau Ora, developed in 2010, is an aspirational, strengths based whānau-centred practice framework used by kaiwhakaaraara, including James, who works in the Te Tihi O Ruahine Whānau Ora Alliance.

Kaiwhakaaraara use this kaupapa Māori approach to improve the wellbeing of whānau as a group. Te Ara Whānau Ora addresses the dreams and aspirations of individuals with in a whānau while also developing a shared whānau moemoeā (dream).

But when the thesis was finished, it occurred to James that he wasn't.

And so James's study journey continued. In 2021, nearly a decade after he first began, he started his PhD titled 'Whānau Ora: the voices of Māori and Pasifika whānau'.

From 'academic speak' to 'James speak'

James's own study journey began with “the stress of being 47 and studying in a class of young people”.

He says Massey support networks and an academic writing course offered to mature students, which lifted his grades from B-minus to A-minus, kept him in class and on track.

He also drew on his rich whakapapa of Te iwi o Ngapuhi, te hapū O Ngati Hine, Niuean, Sāmoan, English and Irish, and his father's passion for theatre passed down to James as a child, for giving him the "the gift of the gab and an extensive vocabulary" to get through, and for the work he does now.

With his own experience in mind, during his master's study James became an academic mentor for social work students on the Te Rau Puawai (Māori scholarship) programme. He developed and delivers academic writing workshops for new bursars starting their academic journey.

Now, James also tutors Pacific students voluntarily outside his job and study. James's own workshops on academic writing translate the same terms he once struggled with.

About Te Rau Puawai

Te ao Māori needs to be lived

James discovered early on in his study journey that his Māori and Pasifika world view did not match what academia was asking of him, and he struggled to find academics who wrote from that perspective.

As his academic network grew, he built up a library on his memory stick of academic references that backed his te ao Māori view and it proved a turning point. “For one assignment I got an A+ and the marker said, ‘I don’t agree at all with your viewpoint but you wrote it so well academically’.”

Times, James says, are beginning to change, but he’s hopeful for further growth in the depth of understanding of te ao Māori in academic areas such as social work and psychology.

That includes enriching academia with more authentic Māori engagement, far beyond the one noho marae he was taken on during his four-year social work degree.

"By engaging in opportunities to live in a Māori world – going to kapa haka, going to stay on a marae and helping out on the marae – you get a better experience on how to engage with whānau.”

Another stumbling block James found was the concept of proving his cultural competency to engage with Māori for his social work registration.

Missing voices

James's PhD explores how success is measured in te ao Māori and Pacific communities is different from a Western view, which relies heavily on statistical evidence.

Literature reviews indicate to James that Whānau Ora – which uses seven set outcome areas to build a plan for whānau – works, but the way Whānau Ora outcomes are measured seldom includes the narratives of whānau for policy makers and funders to consider.

On the seven Whānau Ora outcome areas, James says: "We can provide data on healthy lifestyle, economic security – the whānau set the tasks and the goals. We can prove from data that they’re achieving those but that doesn’t give you a picture of the change and what’s happened for whānau.”

To partially answer the question, Whānau Ora commissioning agencies have come up with a figure of social return on investment. Pasifika Futures, in their 2020 report, put it at $1 of investment for $43 of return, says James. It’s a big number, but not one that captures, or measures, the transformation for whānau.

Finding the gold among whānau

James’ interview with a 70-year-old kuia, whaea Mirika, brought a lot of wisdom and knowledge that he used in his master’s thesis, and revisits in his work now.

James says it's key to not just work with individuals that are referred, but with the whole whānau. It's also vital for many whānau to be introduced to the power of creating āhurutanga (safe space for kōrero), and to describe their dreams and aspirations within that.

He asked one 11-year-old boy to do just that.

Eighteen months later, both parents had completed courses to improve their whānau dynamics, they were in employment and "the boy got all of his dreams and then the whānau graduated".

He also worked with a whānau with parents who had a longstanding cycle of violence stemming from mental health issues, followed by stints in prison.

The problem, says James, is that these stories aren't being reflected in the system. "How do you measure that outcome? You can’t see it on that data. You can’t see the transformation of that whānau in the data. I’ve seen change in whānau, but the system is not really changing.”

Dreams, not deficits

Helping professions tend to work across crisis intervention – telling people what to do – and that needs to change, says James.

He’s worked on a collective impact initiative – where Government agencies and partners work alongside whānau for better outcomes – for more than five years. It’s an approach that brings agencies into one room with whānau, instead of running from one appointment to the next, meeting with agencies that have their own requirements and are not working collaboratively to assist whānau to achieve positive outcomes.

James currently has 12 agencies and partners working in this way in his home region, the Manawatū, but wants to see collective impact taken to scale, tailored to each community.

James has seen huge success with the collective impact model, including a real pathway to home ownership for low-income whānau. It's that success he wants to see throughout every community, not ongoing focus on what's going badly.

“I’ll sit there with a whānau and say, ‘what’s good about drugs?’. They’ll say, ‘it helps us cope and I can escape’. I’ll say, what’s not good about drugs? ‘Oh I have no food for the kids and we fight over money.’ And then we’re back to, how would you like it to be? In three to five minutes we’ve gone from crisis to aspiration.”

While James focuses on helping whānau reach their dreams – a pathway into their own homes, out of perpetual cycles of violence, into employment – James dreams about a day when other help professionals would strive to be like Whānau Ora navigators.

He hopes to complete his PhD before he’s 60 – and then, continue his work at Whānau Ora. “I don’t yet think of myself as a researcher or academic, I am a 56-year-old kaiwhakaaraara who works in the frontline with Māori and Pasifika whānau."

More information

Thesis title

Whānau Ora: the voices of Māori and Pasifika whānau.

Supervisors

• Associate Professor Tracie Mafile'o's profile
• Associate Professor Fiona Te Momo's profile

Research links

Media and news

• James’s study journey

Published 25 January 2022.