McLaren Park Henderson South Community Trust – So Much More Than A Hub

This case study was curated to spark thinking about local structures and approaches that can enable communities to improve their own wellbeing. It’s part of a wider Think Piece, Powering Up Communities to Deliver Local Wellbeing 2024, commissioned by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council.

 JOURNEY TO DATE

MPHS is a responsive, community-led development organisation that over the last 20 years has gone from strength to strength, actively supporting the wellbeing needs of their local community through diverse initiatives, projects and programmes. While the focus of activities is their direct McLaren Park Henderson South community, in more recent times the organisation has expanded its community development and enterprise focus into wider western Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland.

Starting from humble beginnings with the initial coordinator working from a broom cupboard at Bruce McLaren Intermediate, MPHS has been a proudly community-led initiative. Initially sparked by growing concerns about young people in the area having nothing to do and getting into trouble, local community leaders and the then Waitakere City Council got together to develop a community response – new afterschool and holiday programmes. These first initiatives were hugely successful, which in turn got people asking, “what else could we be doing to support our young people and our wider community?”

Extensive community engagement and door knocking by local volunteers followed, tipping out both local issues and opportunities the community saw for their place. With a range of committed and ambitious community leaders, schools and local Council support in behind, a collaborative approach helped develop community aspirations. With Council having provision in its budget for a much-needed community facility in the area, the MPHS community-Council partnership that followed enabled co-development of not just a new community building but a permanent base for MPHS to both scale its activities and deliver them in a relational way that is reflective of, and responsive to, ever changing community needs.

With the community fund raising $1 million for a youth studio to complement Council’s $3m community centre – the Hub West campus, which opened in 2012, is a jointly owned facility that remains community-led and managed.

The MPHS journey over the last two decades has been a mix of planned and responsive action. A core of multiyear partnerships and contracts helped create some anchor activities that have in turn enabled a pipeline of intergenerational connection and local leadership development. Key MPHS anchor activities have included youth programmes (including high tech/creative classes, leadership camp, youth club etc), Project Twin Streams (community-based streamside restoration), HIPPY (a home-based programme to help parents get their 2-5-year-old child ready for success in education), Joy Club (activities for older adults), playgroups and exercise classes for new Mums.

For MPHS Chief Executive Kathryn Lawlor, key enablers of MPHS in its journey so far are:

• Being place based – it grounds the MPHS vision, mission and purpose.
• Local ownership and loyalty – built through 20 years of continually engaging, doing, supporting, and having a visible, hub space to operate out of.
• Strong, consistent governance – underpinned by a mix of long term/newer members with an intentional mix of required skillsets (e.g. HR, Strategy) and community knowledge and relationships within the Board team.
• Rangatahi focus – which continues to galvanise local energy and support.
• Trusted to deliver – MPHS has built a quality delivery reputation amongst funders, with belief in the community too that MPHS will do what it says it will, and in an authentic MPHS way.

ORGANISATIONAL MODEL

While the MPHS Community Trust has gone through a couple of iterations of name and objectives over the last 20 years, the organisational model underpinning it has remained largely unchanged. The Chief Executive currently has ten direct reports, with an inhouse financial manager also part of the team.

The last strategic refresh in 2017 confirmed the MPHS People-Pride-Place focus (caring for people and the environment) still made sense at community, MPHS team and board level, with strong support for what was happening in and for the wider Henderson south community.

The MPHS Board meets monthly to consider progress, challenges and new opportunities, with the Board Chair and Chief Executive generally connecting two to four times in between Board hui. Each year an annual report provides a snapshot of the year’s achievements, with different MPHS activities, team and board members also profiled to provide a fuller picture of what, how and who is involved in MPHS. The MPHS annual report is shared at a fun community celebration held in November each year at Hub West. This hui brings together MPHS supporters to share kai, celebrate successes and gather ideas for what next. Around 60-80 people generally attend this event – which also usefully doubles as an AGM.

In more recent times, it’s became financially clear that MPHS needs to keep growing if it wants to achieve its purpose. This prompted an exploration of income generation opportunities that could leverage existing MPHS capacity and expertise.

Having developed considerable environmental expertise through Project Twin Stream contracts, MPHS took up an opportunity to run the resource recovery centre (Tipping Point) at the Council owned Waitākere Transfer Station. This new seven day a week enterprise has also enabled wider social goals with 50-75% of staff local and/or had previously faced barriers to employment. 25% of annual Tipping Point profits are now being fed back into the MPHS Youth Studio, which has proven to be one of the hardest programmes to find ongoing operational funding to sustain.

Similarly, MPHS community development and capacity building expertise has been leveraged to provide community governance training and mentoring for community groups across West Auckland. A multiyear programme, funded through the Henderson Massey Local Board, has been designed by MPHS to also enable tailored follow-on support for community organisations wanting support to implement governance changes. Some of this support is provided by the MPHS team, other aspects by other external community governance specialists.

Expanding activities beyond MPHS borders has been done with great care. The MPHS team are clear they won’t compete with other good local organisations/services. They proactively meet with other organisations to talk about expansion plans and opportunities for possible collaboration ahead of decision making on potential new activities.

As new opportunities pop up through the year that aren’t in the MPHS Annual Plan, there’s collective discussion across staff and board teams to get agreement on which way to go. Some key questions that guide discussion and decision making include:

While new MPHS team member roles generally arise from new contracts/funding, MPHS has also created roles to do better for the community they serve. For example a new kaitakawaenga (cultural support) role came about after intentionally considering the high numbers of Māori and Pasifika people who call McLaren Park Henderson South home and how responsive MPHS was to their cultural needs.

The kaitakawaenga role also provides strategic support at management and board levels and has been hugely impactful for MPHS. Relationships and connections within and across the Māori community have strengthened and with MPHS cultural competence attested, new doors have opened up, with plans to create a similar role to support Pasifika communities and cultural competency.

In terms of iwi relationships, MPHS notes that positive relationships with local iwi Te Kawerau a Maki have strengthened now that the iwi has more staff capacity to engage and work with community partners.

KEY RELATIONSHIPS

For MPHS community and engagement and input to planning happens iteratively through the year through programmes and informal pop ups like sausage sizzles and coffee carts taken to different neighbourhoods. The MPHS team has grown a team culture of learning, with team hui always asking:

• How is the community responding to what we’re doing?
• What are the emerging needs we’re seeing?
• What are the community asking us to do or wanting to do themselves?
• What are people talking about – what’s exciting or concerning them?
• What are we noticing about where people are at now?

Working relationally is important to MPHS, with extra effort in recent years to rebuild and strengthen local connections that had fallen away. Hub West also provides a critical space for relationship building, with Hub West Coordinator Agnes personally taking bookings and returning phone calls.

Post Covid, the MPHS team have also noticed a change in what local people need from their Hub too. With more people now sleeping in cars, there’s a need for somewhere to charge a phone, have some weetbix, a hot drink and a chat.

While collaboration is resource intensive, MPHS is at a scale now where they can participate in collective city-wide forums like West Auckland Together, unlike many other smaller local hubs who simply don’t have capacity to participate. There are many benefits from relationships and others knowing a lot about your mahi.

MPHS’s collaborative approach also extends to supporting other small local groups and initiatives in their rohe. Sometimes the request is to hold funds or provide back office support. At other times, it’s to assist people with ideas to move into a doing it phase. For MPHS the benefits of umbrellaing include new connections, relationships and supporting small scale local action. However, in reality the role generally involves much more than being a bank account and is time consuming.

FUNDING AND SUPPORT

MPHS continues to be funded through a mix of grants, contracts and enterprise income with the revenue splits for the 2022-year end noted in the adjoining table. With no cost of living increases in recent Council grants or contracts, funding has got tighter. MPHS notes however they are more fortunate than some NGOs in Tāmaki Makaurau who have had funding cuts. Much of this they attribute to a positive working relationship with their local Board and a strong track record of effective community-led delivery and support.

With increasing pressure to self-generate more funding and diversify income streams, MPHS notes the importance of being clear about just where additional income will be targeted.

In 2015, MPHS established social enterprise the Tipping Point, a community recycling centre.  For the 2021-22 year, 334 tonnes of waste (123 elephants!) were diverted from landfill, with the enterprise clearly supporting the organisation’s social and environmental goals.

CE Kathryn Lawlor is quick to point out that while financially beneficial, running large scale social enterprises puts an additional strain on the organisation’s management resource and requires the Board to be comfortable with taking greater financial risk. MPHS is clear on bottom lines however: the new Waiōrea Community Recycling Centre will need to be sustainable to support similar wider community outcomes like what is achieved at Tipping Point.

When it comes to reporting and accountabilities, MPHS acknowledges the importance of stories and gathering participant feedback, with value not just for funders but also for staff so they know how they and their work is valued. The MPHS team would also prefer to do more face to face reporting and/or have funders come and spend time in the hub and see their work in action.

With most funder-driven templated reporting providing limited value to MPHS, having the time and head space to do more solid thinking on what information MPHS would like to collect and report back on is something that remains on the MPHS wish list. As Kathyrn notes “it’s one of those important things we never have time or capacity to properly do.”

BARRIERS/ENABLERS OF SUSTAINABILITY AND GROWTH

ENABLERS:

• Investment in organisational development and capacity building, alongside programme delivery. It’s important that financial, governance and people systems are all strong too.
• Time/putea for relationships, connecting, collaborating, and gathering insights and intel across everything happening in the community.
• Regular hui and information sharing across key partners so relationships and trust is maintained.
• Having the right skillsets and capacities in place when taking on community engagement and facilitation roles. Working in and with your community to progress challenging local issues and solutions is nuanced work, not a technical exercise.

BARRIERS:

• People – collaboration is good in theory but it’s really people dependent. So much depends on individuals, their mindsets and who’s in what roles.
• Ongoing restructuring/people turn over in Councils. Having to continually restart relationships impacts on momentum and impact.
• Government departments generically cancelling programmes/contracts, even when effective locally-led services are in place e.g. When the Ministry of Education cancelled MPHS’s 10-year HIPPY contract in 2022 they were supporting 50 local families and had a waiting list. MPHS long term success was built from supporting whānau well, and going door to door to engage and enrol vulnerable families because they knew who they were.  

ADVICE FOR COUNCILS AND OTHERS LOOKING TO SUPPORT COMMUNITY STRUCTURES THAT SUPPORT DELIVERY OF LOCAL COMMUNITY OUTCOMES:

• Local community facilities are a key lever for local development, community connections and wellbeing collaboration. Community-led (as opposed to Council run) hubs are more vibrant, active and cost-effective spaces. When a local community has skin in the game, they care and co-invest and can be responsive to what’s needed, holding community-led values.
• While ownership should be in the community, Council needs to be connected and enabling things too. It’s about collaboration not devolution. There’s a huge opportunity to bring the technical skills/resources of Councils and others together with the community development/relational/social process skills of community anchor organisations. Most complex issues have both technical and community elements so you need to have both working together to make real progress.  
• Ensure capacity building support (e.g.professional and organisational development) is included above and beyond service delivery contracts, along with resource to enable ongoing community listening, engagement and relationship mahi.
• In health there are huge opportunities to partner with grass roots organisations and community hubs like MPHS who have local relationships and support bases to build new local wellbeing approaches. With the right support, community hubs could become new wellbeing hubs.
• Ensure local anchor organisations have really solid foundations in place before setting expectations that they grow to take on lots more. Provide HR support when and as they grow and assist them to build their communications and storytelling capacity so that everyone knows what’s happening – locally and externally too.