Get Real: Talking mental health & disability
Get Real presents frank and fearless conversations about mental health and disability, including people with lived experience, frontline workers in the sector, as well as policymakers and advocates. Get Real is produced and hosted by Emily Webb and co-hosted by Karenza Louis-Smith on behalf of ermha365 Complex Mental Health and Disability Services provider (https://www.ermha.org/).
Get Real: Talking mental health & disability
Complex Needs Conference 2025: The complexities of gang communities in Aotearoa with Dr Armon Tamatea
The Complex Needs Conference 2025 on March 26-27 in Melbourne is co-hosted by ermha365 and ACSO – Australian Community Support Organisation. The conference is funded by the Victorian Government’s Department of Families, Fairness and Housing.
Both ermha365 and ACSO deliver the pilot program Assertive Outreach and Support on behalf of the DFFH. This service is for people with complex needs who are experiencing significant service barriers.
Our guest is Associate Professor, Dr Armon Tamatea who will deliver the closing keynote address at the conference - ‘We must remember, these people’s history follows them’: Maori, marginality and the Complex Needs of Gang Communities in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Armon is a clinical psychologist and the Director of clinical psychology training at the School of Psychology at the University of Waikato in the North Island.
ermha365 provides mental health and disability support for people in Victoria and the Northern Territory. Find out more about our services at our website.
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Speaker 2:Welcome to Get Real talking mental health and disability brought to you by the team at Irma 365.
Speaker 3:Join our hosts, emily Webb and Carenza Louis-Smith, as we have frank and fearless conversations with special guests about all things mental health and complexity all things mental health and complexity. We recognise people with lived experience of mental ill health and disability, as well as their families and carers. We recognise their strength, courage and unique perspective as a vital contribution to this podcast so we can learn, grow and achieve better outcomes together grow and achieve better outcomes together.
Speaker 4:We talk a lot about issues around risk, but we don't really talk about potentials. Complex needs, certainly, but complex potentials is maybe the other side of that coin. You know, what are the ways forward? Moving beyond notions of you know, for example care, into notions of thriving, for example. And what role do our systems have to play in not just making sure people don't return to the system, but also that they can flourish?
Speaker 5:Welcome to Get Real talking mental health and disability. I'm Emily Webb. Irma 365 CEO Corenza Louis-Smith is here too, and we are very excited to be speaking about the upcoming Complex Needs Conference 2025, which is happening on March 26 to 27 in Melbourne. Irma 365 is co -hosting this Australia First Conference with AXO, australian Community Support Organisation. The conference is funded by the Victorian Government's Department of Families, fairness and Housing, known as DFFH in shorthand. So how this came about is that both IRMA 365 and AXO deliver the pilot program Assertive Outreach and Support on behalf of the DFFH. This service is for people with complex needs and are experiencing significant service barriers. The two key components of the AOS program are the delivery of assertive outreach and case management support. Referrals come from Victoria's Multiple and Complex Needs Initiative, known as MACNI. So, before we introduce our guest Carenza, what are the complex needs in the context of the work we and AXO do with AOS and the intention of the conference?
Speaker 6:Good morning, em. Yes, look, I think we are really excited, irma and AXO, to be co-hosting the Complex Needs Conference. We're two organisations not many in Australia actually that focus wholly and solely on working with people who have complex needs. So, when you think about complex needs, we work with people who experience issues like mental health challenges, often harmful use of substance, behaviour that can lead to risk to themselves and others, offending, homelessness, trauma and disability, and sometimes all of those things might be happening and intersecting in someone's life at the same time.
Speaker 6:So you know, I guess, as experts, I think Irma and Axel are described as Australian experts in this space, really pioneering and leading the way to think about better ways that we can do this work, and so we were thrilled to be asked to co-host the Complex Needs Conference, as you said, funded by DFFH, the Victorian government, in March. The theme is making it work, overcoming barriers and simplifying support for people with complex needs, and we think that's really important. The aim for us is to provide a platform for people who come to the conference presenters and participants, audience members, members to share ideas, forge partnerships and to think about new approaches and ways that we can support people who have complex needs. So that's the aim and, yeah, we're very, very excited about it.
Speaker 5:Well, I am really pumped for this conversation with our guest who is one of the keynote speakers at the Complex Needs Conference. Who is one of the keynote speakers at the Complex Needs Conference? We are grateful to have some time with Associate Professor Dr Amon Tamatea, who is speaking with us from Aotearoa, new Zealand. Amon is a clinical psychologist and the Director of Clinical Psychology Training at the School of Psychology. There's a lot of psychologies there At the University of Waikato in the North Island.
Speaker 5:His work and expertise are in the assessment and treatment of men with histories of violent and sexually harmful behaviour, and this work has significantly contributed to the design and implementation of an experimental prison-based violence prevention program for high-risk prisoners diagnosed with psychopathy. Amon is also the project lead for a very exciting project, na Tumana Kotanga, turning the Tide on Prison Violence. The Maori word means hope or aspiration, which I really love, and this is a government-funded research program that aims to understand and reduce prison violence in New Zealand. There's so much more, but we want to hear from Armin, so thank you so much for your time Well thank you for having me.
Speaker 4:It's lovely to be here with you today and to have a korero have a conversation with you. Thank you.
Speaker 5:So, armin, first of all, I'm sure you get asked to do a lot of speaking engagements and conferences all over the world, so what made you want to participate in this Complex Needs Conference in Melbourne coming up?
Speaker 4:When I heard about the Complex Needs Conference. Well, when I was invited to the Complex Needs Conference, as far as I'm concerned, any organisation, any group that wants to improve the lot of folk who are largely disenfranchised or disempowered is worth supporting and getting behind, particularly our vulnerable people and who often are at an intersection in terms of poverty, crime, racism, other discriminations and social disadvantages. The Co-Papa the agenda is great and really looks like a great thing to support. So I'm really proud to be invited very humble, actually to be invited and support the event.
Speaker 6:Thanks, amon, and, as Am said, your work and research is intriguing. You know I can't wait to hear you at the conference. I'm really really looking forward to your keynote, and the topic of men and violence prevention initiatives and supports is really a hot topic here in Australia right now, and I'm really interested how did you come into this area of psychology and decide to specialize in it? I guess it's not something for everyone, right?
Speaker 4:Well, yeah, that's exactly right. I kind of fell into the area by accident and, if you'll entertain me for a moment, I mean, like a lot of people who get into psychology broadly, we're often driven by curiosity and, for those who move into the helping professions, we're often driven by a desire to create positive change for people. So behaviour change and psychotherapy were real strong interests of mine when I was being trained as a clinical psychologist. We were just sent out into the field and I was sent to a prison. I had no experience of a prison outside of multiple viewings of Shawshank Redemption, which was not a good sales pitch for prison work, but it was very eye-opening.
Speaker 4:I learned a lot, particularly because I started in a youth prison.
Speaker 4:When we used to have those here in New Zealand, some of my best teachers were young men who were somehow trying to make the most of what were really quite tragic situations that were legacies of trauma, intergenerational trauma that go back a long time in those families and, of course, the reasons that brought them to those, those spaces, those prison spaces. It was also very tragic as well, and to try and understand what those contexts are was a huge learning for me and certainly challenged my own preconceived ideas as a lot of us hold, I guess, at one point or another, about how and why people engage in these sort of behaviors, but also what those contexts are about. I just never looked back. The area I kind of wanted to move into initially was actually psychosis. Don't ask me why. I've got no personal or family experience of that. Maybe it was something I picked up in a lecture. But after one day at a youth prison I thought this is me and the next 24 or 25 years has kind of been where I've. That's been my space.
Speaker 6:It's interesting, isn't it, when you talk about when you first walk into a prison. I remember the first time I went into a women's prison and what blew my mind was all of the opportunities that existed in this prison. So there was a bakery in this prison, the women could learn a trade and there was education classes. When I talked to the women, the bit that was I kind of broke my heart actually, I'm on was that life inside the prison gave them more opportunities than the life they had outside, and in some ways, prison was safer Before them. They had a roof over their head, a bed, access to mental health services all of these different things, education, employment, programs and yet when they left jail, kind of you know, on that day, you know off, you go.
Speaker 6:Here's your bag, black bin bag or something filled with whatever you had. Maybe there's someone to pick you up, Maybe there's not. Not, maybe you're kind of going to homelessness. That's what, you know, really drew me to this work as well. You know what you're saying, because in my mind that was something that we had to change and had to be different like. Life outside of prison has surely got to be better.
Speaker 4:We have to give people better opportunities than lives we give people in prison yes, yes, I agree, and I I guess the challenge for whether we're talking government agencies like our corrections departments, for example, or NGOs or charitable organisations who work with folk who are justice involved is not only about supporting people in their own decision making, but also supporting their autonomy, their agency and also their dignity. Correctional system here, probably like most industrialised countries, is very stigmatising experiences and how people manage that varies, of course, and how communities support people coming through varies. We're actually a reasonably punitive country here in New Zealand, so we don't seem to be too forgiving of how people have come through the system. There's a broad kind of cultural norm here. That's something that I'd certainly like to see changed, because we talk a lot about issues around risk, of dangerousness, but we don't really talk about potentials, you know, and complex needs.
Speaker 4:Certainly, even that notion, I think, is very much hand in hand with people who are justice involved, but complex potentials is maybe the other side of that coin. You know, what are the ways forward? Moving beyond notions of, you know, for example, care, into notions of thriving, for example, and what role do our systems have to play in not just making sure people don't return to the system, but also that they can flourish. And I think that's a whole new conversation, especially here in New Zealand, to really kind of consider moving beyond just a sort of a broad model of care but towards this idea of thriving. How can we get the most of people being through the system?
Speaker 5:Your keynote at the conference is called we Must Remember these People's Histories. Follow them Maori Marginality and the Complex Needs of Gang Communities in Aotearoa. Of course, people will need to come to the conference to hear this, but could you give us a little bit of insight into your clinical experience and research for this topic? And also, what are traditional New Zealand gang communities and what are the complexities and barriers for this group of people?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so just very briefly. So I'm a clinical psychologist by training. I developed as a correction psychologist here in New Zealand. I worked for the department for 10 years before joining the dark side of academia and during that journey with the department I had an opportunity to develop as a researcher and one of the early projects I was involved in was a question that we'd been as psychologists we were trying to work through, actually not just as psychologists as a department was.
Speaker 4:Gangs and risk were kind of always in the same sentence. But we did know an awful lot about these groups, these communities, let alone how to work in a way that was safe and effective, particularly around risk to community but also risk within community. So long story short, I asked the question how do people leave these groups? Because we didn't know that and the position the department had at the time I'm going back to the 2000s here was to try and extract people from from their gang memberships. The department's moved to a different place. Now I don't know if that had anything to do with the work I did, but certainly the question I was asking was how did people leave? Because we didn't know.
Speaker 4:We know that some people didn't, perhaps couldn't, leave gang communities. One because of that maybe they knew too much, or probably more likely reason is loyalty deep, deep, deep loyalty. And also in New Zealand, gangs aren't just a young person's game, they're kind of a lifespan development game. Here in New Zealand we have gang members in their 50s and 60s. Actually, if you go back far enough, there's some who are still alive, probably in their 80s now. So a lot of people in this country who are gang members are members for life, quite literally. It's not uncommon in the prisons to run into gang members in their 30s and 40s. The literature tells us that this is largely kind of an adolescent thing and maybe there's something to be said about how people enter gangs around adolescence. But in New Zealand it's often a lifetime deal. But, that being said, some people leave and there's a variety of ways they do leave, and so that was a kind of a way forward to try and think differently about how we, as psychologists who come from a particular mode of operating, work with people from gang communities who also come from a very different mode of operating, and how we can somehow come to terms with that in a way that would firstly reduce recidivism, which was the mission of the department, but in a way that was what we call mana enhancing, which is maintaining dignity but also writing choices and supporting positive choices for people in the community.
Speaker 4:So that's where this whole journey started with me and I suppose, if anything, one thing I've tried to really challenge is this idea of seeing gangs as solely, or even largely, criminal organisations. Don't get me wrong, many of our gang communities are heavily crime involved. We can't ignore that. But many are not, and there's been a number of groups, sometimes in their totality, have been trying to turn that ship around by doing more positive things, if not in the community, at least for their own community. So talking about gangs as communities is not so much to whitewash or to soft soap the notions or the ideas or the issues, but rather to think about communities and the rules about communities, how communities operate. And to me personally as a researcher and a clinician and just as a human being, I've found that a much more insightful way, for me at least, to think differently about these groups.
Speaker 4:They don't all think about crime. They don't all think about crime 24 and 7. Often people are involved in community activities, sports activities, perhaps anything that the rest of us might do to one degree or another. But there's also there's other elements and dimension to the lives of many members that is obviously quite secretive and there's other kind of elements there, some of which of course feeds into criminal lifestyles, but there's quite a complex array of stuff.
Speaker 4:So the more I've looked into this like anything else and this will sound like a cliche but the more I learn, the less I know. And again, I'm also an outsider. Which is the probably most important thing to say here is that I'm certainly no expert at all on gang communities. I guess I've been a guest from time to time, I've been a witness, I guess, in terms of gang communities from time to time and opportunities to have sit downs with gang members across the country from time to time. But I'm certainly no expert, but often, I guess, seen as an academic or a clinical friend, I guess, for a number of the communities around the country.
Speaker 6:And I'm really, really looking to that keynote. I think it's really topical, as I said at the start, in terms of some of the challenges we're facing here right now in Australia, and you know, new Zealand always seems to me to be at the forefront of innovation, research and community initiatives in heaps of areas, and I'm curious are there research and programs internationally for First Nations peoples or groups within prisons that have had any crossover with your work, or do you think that this is something that New Zealand is really leading on?
Speaker 4:I guess that's a good question.
Speaker 4:I'm a believer that everything connects, and certainly in the Indigenous world, particularly with the Indigenous research community, which tend to be very community-oriented.
Speaker 4:Very little of what I do I would even consider to be remotely original, but often part of a broader tradition of thinking about how indigenous communities, especially Marduk communities, engage. So an example of international work would be a close colleague of mine, associate Professor Bobby Henry from University of Saskatchewan. He's Métis and he's been working in, I guess, what he would call street gang research in the Calgary, alberta area for many years, and survivance has been a notion that he's been kind of developing how people navigate through systems, especially systems that are designed not to help facilitate positive change or to support communities that are disenfranchised and marginalized, so dealing with vulnerable people, albeit those that maybe make other people vulnerable but are also caught up in these intersections that you sort of mentioned before and the, I guess, the hard consequences that those lifestyles and those circumstances bring for people. So I've certainly been shaped by thinking from overseas and probably the work of Bobby Henry would be some of the most impactful work for my own thinking in this area. Yeah.
Speaker 5:You will also speak about the importance of culturally accountable philosophy of care and indigenous ways of being when it comes to broadly speaking community services. What we're talking about linking up care services. What does this look like on the ground?
Speaker 4:I guess it's mostly thinking about what the principles of that might look like and again, coming from an indigenous mode of operating and this isn't my model, by the way but this is a set of principles I often use as a kind of a compass when thinking about these issues, especially with how governments or non-government organisations, community organisations or even communities actually kind of operate and interact, especially with people that they set up to serve or to support or to facilitate in positive actions, for example. So the principles I sort of think of especially is around coming from a place of respect, so being inclusive, engaging in dialogue and I think we've seen in recent world politics where dialogue is not kind of the go-to in many instances, but that's a really important part is people speaking on a level playing field around what their concerns are for them, but also that people being heard I guess at the end of the day and I think, as Marty, we haven't cornered the market on that I think that's a fairly universal marker of respect that people are acknowledged and people are being heard, but also that their needs are kind of considered, at least as part of the overall package, in terms of how services are constructed and also what kind of services are delivered and how practices are practiced and so forth. So so what kind of services delivered and how practices practice and so forth. So respect relevance, of course, that's the services, the aim of the services. What the services deliver is actually relevant to the needs of the community or community members being responsible for those relationships. So these aren't widgets to be counted but actually relationships to be engaged with and that there are the points of connection.
Speaker 4:Connectiveness is really important for people generally, but it's a real marker for Indigenous communities, arguably around the world, where relationality and how people relate. Arguably early social media could almost go back to early models of Indigenous ways of relating in some respects, because that's often how the world is kind of navigated is through relationships and who's connected with who and so forth. And I guess, fourthly, it's around reciprocity. This is really important for researchers and particularly to not fly in, take data and disappear, need to be heard from again, but there's actually a giving back to those communities. So any research, any service really needs to be benefiting the people on whom A the setup is served, but also on whom data, information, wisdom, knowledge has been taken from as well. So this could look like a variety of things, depending on the nature of the service.
Speaker 4:Obviously, a lot of my time is spent with correctional services, which are notoriously worldwide of course I certainly wouldn't say New Zealand are alone in this but also, being quite concrete, quite unyielding. So building in spaces of flexibility, spaces of conversation, inviting people to be part of their own process of whether we're talking rehabilitation care, thriving as the case may be is arguably a different set of agendas than maybe what's traditionally been observed in those particular spaces. So thinking differently about leaning into the culture and finding the solutions within communities and within folkways, how culture informs how people are organised and how the universe is organised and put together, I think are really important ways of thinking which are hard to do from a top-down policy position where there's no voice from the ground, from below.
Speaker 6:I also would love to talk about your research as well, which is aiming to understand and reduce prison violence too. So that's brilliant. That's pretty huge. How did this come about? You know? What was it that drove you to think this is the thing that I really want to delve into and do more about, and understand and try and inform how then, perhaps you know, things are created and done differently.
Speaker 4:Well, to be fair, going back to what we were talking about before around how everything connects, it was actually conversations with a number of gang families gang whānau that sparked this piece. So it actually started I feel ashamed to say this. It actually started off as a bit of a gang profile piece initially who's who in the zoo, kind of thing but then it sort of struck me that actually no one will benefit from that work. That's just counting red heads against blue heads against brown heads against black heads. You know, really it's about safety and those were the priorities. So that was a piece of work. This, that the work I'm that you're referring to, was actually driven by and heavily informed by, communities, and I say this with no jokes. But our gang communities are probably some of the biggest stakeholders of our prison system here in new zealand because their people are there constantly around the clock and, uh, some could say that prisons are probably the most richest recruiting grounds for our gang communities and, to be fair, there's probably some truth to that. But they're also one of the great extractors of taking people out of the community, especially from gang communities, into those spaces. So there's some real complex dynamics here. The view I kind of take is more of a and I'm an amateur ecologist really so it's kind of zooming out more, because I came from a model which is very typical, I guess, of correctional models, especially in English-speaking countries, of focusing on individuals and individual needs, and that's important. So I'm taking nothing away from that.
Speaker 4:But when we look at context of violence it often requires zooming out. So what's going on in the setting? What role does a physical environment have to play here? For example, we have a geographer on our team who took some aerial shots of a number of the units and we looked at the dispersion of violence in different spaces. And in some units they were happening in cells and wide open courtyards where everyone could see what was going on, but in other units it was happening in little hidey holes where there was very low visibility, for instance. So even space informs and the layout of a place can inform where violence occurs.
Speaker 4:But also understanding the culture. So when we look at like any like, whether we're talking police data or prison data, we can look at the number of incidents over a period of time. That tells a story, certainly, but there's a lot of stories that are obscured by those numbers as well. So understanding what the folkways are, the motivations, the rhythms and flows, how prison communities if I can use that phrase for a moment how they roll and they're not the same everywhere. High security places operate much differently from a prison culture point of view than, say, lower security, more open kind of spaces do, and understanding what that's about, what's allowed to happen in those spaces, so to speak, what's not versus these other spaces, understanding those rules, because often it's the prisoner body that regulate that, not just the staff or let alone regulations.
Speaker 4:And then you zoom out again Legislation has a role to play. Policy has a role to play. Regimes have a role to play. Even public opinion has a role to play. Public opinion of course informs policy, ultimately, and policies inform legislation, which of course informs what's permissible and what's not, how people can be treated and with what rationale. So all these things connect. And so to me and I know this sounds kind of off the wall, but thinking about things ecologically there are complexities, there are, and it's more about the relationships between those things than just the factors, because I guess I come from a tradition of identifying factors and seeing how they apply to a person, but it's the connections, arguably, between those factors that are perhaps more meaningful and insights they can provide in terms of, in the prison sense, what can facilitate safer spaces or maybe what can compromise safety within those spaces.
Speaker 6:I think the way that you describe that makes so much sense, and that's how I think I would see things here. You know, all of those things play a huge part, and the media as well. I think what we wanted to achieve at this conference is you know what's actually working, what are the things that we're seeing on the ground that are different, the way that we're tackling things differently, doing things differently, approaching things differently and I think that's what I'm really excited about when it comes to your keynote, because I think your research shows some of that the thinking that you have and the knowledge that you have about gangs and how gangs operate and work, but also some of the things in New Zealand that you've done to change some of that, and I think it's going to be really interesting to hear that. So I think there's a lot that we can learn here in Australia from some of the things that you're doing, amon.
Speaker 4:No pressure, but that's true.
Speaker 6:Yeah no pressure.
Speaker 5:No pressure at all. We want you to solve this, Amon, and we want the politicians to be listening.
Speaker 6:Look, I've really enjoyed the conversation, amon. I think I could chat to you for hours about some of the things that you know you're doing, and I think there's a lot for us to learn. And I think what really strikes me is you're right. You know complex needs are complex, they're not easy to solve, they're not easy to resolve. The intergenerational nature, you know break. How do you actually break that cycle? What are the points, what are the ways that you can do that? I think you pose some really good questions and I think there, you know, hopefully there are things that you're learning that you can share with us, that we can put into play here, I think in Australia.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and we're really looking forward to meeting you in Melbourne at the conference. And likewise, yeah, it'd be great, and, as we come to the end of this discussion and you know, a little teaser for the conference, so if people are listening, we want you to book.
Speaker 4:Do you have any final thoughts or anything that we didn't ask you that you want to share?
Speaker 4:Just a couple of quick ones, if that's okay, I guess in keeping with the theme of our kōrero, our discussion here, as well as the one to come in Melbourne later on.
Speaker 4:I think leaning into it and appreciating complexity, for me personally has actually been a huge learning From my discipline of psychology. We have a long history of trying to reduce complexity, and there's reasons for that because we aspire to be scientific and that's what that's about. But at the end of the day we end up with a fragmented way of seeing the universe. I think so, by embracing and leaning into complexity gets us away from oversimplifying the issues and, by extension, oversimplifying proposed solutions. So I think complexity is something that needs to be contended to on its own terms. The real world doesn't really give a toss about our theories. The real world is going to keep on doing what it's going to keep on doing. It's up to us to kind of meet it on its own terms would be my view, and I guess the other thing is the journey's rather volatile times are in now, so that we should let us continue to be kind to each other and show compassion.
Speaker 5:That's a really great point and that's a really great point to end.
Speaker 4:Huge thanks to Dr Amon Tamatea for joining us for this episode. Thank you for having me. It's been a real joy.
Speaker 5:Thank you. It's been such a privilege for us and there's information in the show notes so you can check out the awesome program for the Complex Needs Conference. There are more than 70 sessions, including panel discussions, presentations, amon's keynote and lived experience conversations what is currently happening in the space, what's working and what's not. It's going to be great and book now get on it. We will also have links to find out more about Amon's work in the show notes. Thanks very much for listening and we look forward to seeing some of you at the Complex Needs Conference.
Speaker 2:You've been listening to Get Real talking mental health and disability, brought to you by the team at Irma 365. Get Real is produced and presented by Emily Webb, with Corenza Louis-Smith and special guests. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.
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