Associating ‘mana enhancing’ social work with healing-centred practices
What does it mean to social work in a ‘mana enhancing’ way with whānau? The complexities involved in hazarding a neatly packaged up definition to answer this would require a Ph.D. dissertation. So instead, I’ve taken one step to the left of this question, and what I am instead going to attempt to do is pose some ideas around ‘mana enhancing’ as a new/old way of thinking, and throwing into the mix another premise that mana enhancing is about being healing-centred. I say healing-centred as I’m not wanting to default to the interventionist, ‘treatment’ style of social work where we ‘fix’ whānau with a particular therapy, strategy, model or approach.
Through my own lived experiences mostly, what I’ve come to know about being mana enhancing and practising in a mana enhancing way is that it requires a paradigm shift, particularly for practitioners in the social work and helping industries. Mana, as is my understanding, is beyond deficit thinking, pathologising, and even maintaining a focus on being trauma-informed or strengths-based. It really does require being peeled back to the basics — to thinking about what it means to be ‘subtle’ and to ‘tread lightly’ in one’s social work approach, which is something I believe has become a lost art with many social work theories essentially screaming out ‘Here I am!’ or ‘See me in all my amazingness!’
So, for me being mana enhancing is aligned to being healing-centred, and for practitioners such as myself, this means being able to ‘see’ people in their totality, in all of their worth and dignity, and for who they determine themselves to be (as opposed to being defined through a social work assessment template). This shift requires that social workers undergo processes whereby we are able to know ourselves, be able to understand ourselves, so eventually, we may understand others — mostly done through challenging some of the preconceptions we have about working with whānau and what it means to do this in a mana enhancing way.
According to my experience of it, mana is a cultural construct, a lens to see the world. It is based on things such as obligations and responsibilities, and the fundamental role and function of relationship. Therefore, being mana enhancing is about ratcheting these things up, an action/s that celebrate the mana of people. For whānau, this action in relation to being healing-centred could touch on a myriad of things, one of those being the ability to support whānau in the restoration of their cultural identity. For example, I remember a whānau who through intergenerational urban living, had never been onto a marae before. So during their very first time on a marae, they didn’t know what to do, or even how to ask. Because others around them didn’t know they were first-timers, it just came off like they were being resistant, not helping in the kitchen and just keeping to themselves. It wasn’t until one of the nannies went and had a kōrero with the whānau that it became known that actually, they didn’t know what was going on. So, the nanny just told them, help with the preparation for the kai, clearing up dishes, get involved, all of which they did. Sometimes, being mana enhancing looks like a telling off, however it’s the often unspoken aroha that goes with that, and the inclusion of that “I see you” moment, which helps to support the restoration of one’s cultural identity, in small or big ways.
Healing-centred practices is not about treatment or pathologising the whānau. It is not a diagnosis or a professional judgement. It is a minimally-evasive, relational approach — about treading lightly in our social work practice. It starts with the premise that everyone has mana, and that through recognising what whānau have, rather than what they don’t have that we acknowledge and therefore enhance this mana within whānau. I recall one particular whānau who were known by the social service agencies in a particular township for their overuse of food parcels. They had started to get a name for themselves for doing the rounds of the foodbanks. What wasn’t known was that this whānau were regularly feeding hungry children from their neighbourhood, who their own children were bringing home with them, because even though this whānau had very little, it didn’t impact on their innate need to manaaki hungry tamariki. Through being given some insight into what was happening with this whānau, they were able to access the kai legitimately for these tamariki, and not be made to feel inadequate just because they saw a need to feed these kids. Mana enhancing is sometimes just about connecting up the dots, so that we don’t have to feel precious about gatekeeping some of the resources that we have, or that we have done the ‘big’ intervention as a social worker, but that through being able to relate to our whānau we understand there is always more to the story than what sometimes is known through the all seeing eye of social work.
Enhancing mana is an exercise in futility if you’re coming from a power position or you have ulterior motives. This is not meant to be a mind #$%^. It must be what the whānau decide it is. For some in the social work sector, this is the paradigm shift. It is a political act due to this being a cultural shift. Mana comes from a te ao Māori perspective. Maintaining this kind of matauranga Māori lens is about challenging the dominant way that we see the world and are seen by the world, where mana enhancing becomes a tokenistic act or a tick box exercise. What this is about is resisting the need to solely use mainstream ideas and theories, or to default back to these in times of doubt and need. It is about allowing our social work role to take a back seat to the requirements of that whānau. It is about being genuine and intentional in our use of kaupapa Maori philosophies and practices.
Tuhoe tangata, Tame Iti did a Tedx a few years back about mana and being able to measure the person, eye to eye and ‘kanohi ki te kanohi’ face to face. Getting the measure for ourselves in our social work role and for whānau through a healing-centred lens paves the road towards what it means to be mana enhancing. It is about seeing whānau for who they are. It is relating whānau to a bigger context, where it is not just about whānau or about social work. It is not about being healing-centred or even mana enhancing. This is about the collective experiences that Māori contend with on a daily basis, and understanding core social work principles such as anti-oppression and anti-discrimination, and working for social justice, and how we might position ourselves with these kaupapa. Essentially, my argument is that this should be the default setting for all social workers working in Aotearoa New Zealand, to not bandy around the term mana enhancing and think that it is okay to do so, and I believe that is the challenge for all of us.
