Tūtaki looking out for Stratford’s vulnerable youngsters
When Nelson Pulotu was on an Armed Offenders Squad call-out, a young family member caught up in the incident started freaking out.
With little hesitation, Pulotu took his helmet and balaclava off so the young person would recognise him.
The move worked, the child calmed down, Pulotu says.
The 2014 Taranaki Daily News Person of the Year has a long history of working with young people, especially in the time he was a community constable in the low decile suburb of New Plymouth’s Marfell.
So, it might not be surprising that, after serving in the police for 17 years and four months, Pulotu resigned to manage Tūtaki Youth in Stratford. He had been seconded from the police to work in the role in 2019, while still doing police operational duties.
But since he resigned in December his sole role has been general manager.
It’s a police-partnered organisation, but he is not sure if the police would replace his secondment with someone else.
Either way, Tūtaki is not-for-profit and stands alone.
Tūtaki works with underprivileged and vulnerable young people getting them into activities and helping them learn the difference between a good and bad decision.
“The data and evidence out there shows we need to get in earlier,” Pulotu says.
“You can sit there and quote laws and acts and why they shouldn’t do stuff, but the realityis we need to form these relationships where you can have a conversation saying a bad decision looks like this, a good decision looks like this.”
The young people get referred by police, Oranga Tamariki, other not-for-profits, schools and some direct referrals.
“What drew me was we had a site where we could develop our own activities. The youth and social workers do around 100 consults with young people from central Taranaki every year.”
And Tūtaki works with an additional 150 children in groups and programmes.
In 2015, Lions clubs from central Taranaki collectively donated gym gear for what became the Lions Den Community Gym and Fitness Centre, he says.
“When I came in 2019 the gym had been opened to the public for two or three years and had 285 members, which is a great number due to the fact we’re the only gym in town. But by December last year that had ticked up to 640 members.
“Wedevelopedawholelotofprogrammes. Our selling point to visitors was your funds aren’t just going to a business. They’re not going into an owner’s pocket. They’re being used to fund free programmes.”
All the services, social work and youth work are free of charge and the membership money helps pay for that, along with funding from places such as Toi Foundation, TET and lotteries, with contributions from Lions and Sport Taranaki.
Funding was always a priority but with the community buy-in for the space and the income generated by the gym they can be a little bit more fluid and mobile around what they do, Pulotu says.
“We’ve been doing programmes for three years where we bring young people in. They do a gym session, we’ve done lunch preparation and taught them how to use an oven. Some of our young people couldn’t even turn on an oven.”
The piece of equipment most used by the staff is the foosball table. They play games on their breaks, which is great for team spirit, but also for helping deal with some of the emotions brought up by the situations some of the kids found themselves in.
It can be an intense job, youth development practitioner Stacey Seyb says.
“You can get emotionally involved. You can’t help it. We’re all human. It’s about having that compassion but being able to set emotional boundaries.”
They have tools and external supervision to help manage the emotional stress.
An ex-teacher, Seyb does one-on-one consultations with the young people, working on things like anger management, emotion regulation, self-esteem “that’s a big one”, healthy relationships and goal setting.
“They might be getting into trouble or struggling with ADHD, grief or loss. If someone close to them has passed away that can come through in behavioural concerns. Or whānau breakdown.”
This is her dream job. Seyb has always felt drawn to children who were struggling, she says.
“Education can’t be the only focus when there is so much going on.”
Senior children’s social worker Sam Haggart has just arrived back with a primary school-aged youngster who she picked up from school.
The sessions are based around fun, she says.
“We’ll have a topic of that week, we’ll choose a game. There’s a drawer of treats.”
They draw up care plans and do what they can so schools have the information they need to help the children, Haggart says.
Tūtaki funds Speld assessments, at around $1000, to test for things such as ADHD or if a child is on the spectrum.
This is something Pulotu is proud of. It can help the child for the rest of their lives, he says.
Tūtaki works with alternative education and the teen parent unit at Stratford High School, Ngāti Mutunga as well as other organisations.
And has trainers go to local primary schools to do PE sessions.
Pulotu has noticed the growth in membership of the gym for 16 to 25-year-olds.
“We had to re-educate them about not sitting on their phone and around gym etiquette,” he said while laughing.
“It’s a great problem to have. When you think of young people being out and about doing anti social stuff ... it’s a good thing they’re hanging out in a gym in Stratford.“