The effectiveness of the Ōrongomai Marae community reintegration programme led by ex‐prisoners in Aotearoa / New Zealand

Abstract

The aims and questions within the project are to assess the effectiveness of the Ōrongomai Marae community reintegration programme led by ex‐prisoners in Aotearoa New Zealand.

The researcher has worked with prisoners in education, mentoring and social work roles over a number of years. This included the beginnings of reintegration, utilising teams from Department of Corrections and communities in the early 2000s. The reintegration programme currently at Ōrongomai Marae was written by the researcher in 2003, piloted for Ministry of Social Development in 2004 and has been consistently funded from that time.

The area of re‐integration within Aotearoa, New Zealand is under‐researched with most programmes being modelled on British or American models, neither of which have an indigenous commitment to the reintegration. The value and benefit we hope to assess is that culture must be taken into account particularly indigenous identity and that key workers are those who have completed a reintegration journey themselves.

The researcher is currently a full-time Social Work Kaiako employed by Te Wananga o Aotearoa upon the Certificate of Social Services and Bachelor of Social Work Degree, both of which are Bi‐Culturalism in Practise and is a qualified Social Worker registered to the Social Work Registration Board (S.W.R.B.).