5 mins with Tom Hunter
Could you start by telling me who you are and what you do?
I'm Tom Hunter, General Manager of Social Services at Presbyterian Support Southland, where I lead Family Works. I took over from Judith McInerney in January this year.
Leading a social services charity is quite different from working in the commercial sector. It really requires a servant leadership approach. I often tell people that I work with people, for people, because at the heart of everything we do is a commitment to being genuinely person-centred.
How did you get into this work?
I originally trained as a paramedic, after qualifying I moved into disability support work. I started on the frontline as a support worker and spent several years in direct support roles, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Living in Brisbane for seven years, I worked for a couple of different disability service providers. After returning to New Zealand, I joined Odyssey House in Christchurch, where I worked for several years before taking up my current appointment at Presbyterian Support Southland.
Do you think that experience helps you now in your leadership role?
Yes, absolutely. I have some experience of challenges that our clients are facing from my own journey, I think a lot of people in the sector probably do. When you've got that, you get to look at the challenges that people are facing through a whole different lens. I've never forgotten those firsthand experiences. It helps to personalise our work at Family Works because the further you move into leadership, typically the less client contact you have.
Tell me a bit about the mission of your work and what appeals to you personally about that mission?
I guess our mission is really to improve the lives of families in Southland. We want to create healthy, strong and connected families. We want them to be able to flourish. Life has gotten a lot more complex over the last few decades. I think we are slightly less connected as a society in many ways. Those changes mean the Family Works organisation is getting busier. Busier is the new normal. I don't think there is any big rescue coming and I'm really passionate about us just finding new ways to meet those needs.
How do you do that?
At Family Works, our range of services are here to help them develop their own tools, skills and confidence, while also strengthening the communities around them. Time and again, though, I've been pleased and surprised to see that one of the most powerful outcomes isn't the service itself, it's the way that service helps expand a person's network of support. When you increase somebody's sense of connection and belonging, you're building something much more sustainable. There's a saying that it takes a village to raise a child. I think that's true more broadly as well. When you add people to that village and strengthen those relationships, it takes on a life of its own. The community grows, supports itself, and creates opportunities that no single service could provide on its own.
Reflecting back on your experiences in the sector, is there one life-changing lesson that stands out to you?
We're often taught to treat others the way we would like to be treated. In social and human services, though, I think we need to take that a step further and treat people the way they would like to be treated. For me, that means not making assumptions about what's best for someone. When working with clients, the focus should be on partnership rather than direction. People are the experts in their own lives, and our role is to support them to make informed choices. That's been one of the biggest lessons of my career: the importance of curiosity over assumption, and of empowering people to define what success looks like for themselves.
What’s something that gives you joy in your work?
One of the most rewarding aspects of our work is seeing intergenerational cycles broken and watching younger generations reach opportunities and achievements that may not have seemed possible before. It's always remarkable when you see someone choose a very different path for their life or make decisions that open new possibilities for themselves and their family. Those moments are incredibly exciting because they represent real, lasting change. Often, by the time you see someone thriving or making transformative choices, you're seeing the culmination of work that countless others have contributed to long before you arrived. Being even a small part of that journey is something I find really rewarding.
On the flip side of that, what's your greatest challenge professionally?
One of the biggest challenges is staying connected to the people we're ultimately here to serve. In leadership roles, it's easy to spend your days focused on budgets, financial reports, government contracts and organisational planning, all important work, but work that can feel quite removed from the frontline. I think it's really important to stay grounded in our purpose. I make a conscious effort to find opportunities to reconnect with the impact of our services at Family Works. At the end of the day, decisions we make should come back to improving outcomes for the people and communities we serve.
What’s one thing that you would like the general public to understand better about your mahi or the people you serve?
I would challenge some of the stereotypes that exist around the people who access social services. Social need doesn't discriminate. The circumstances that lead someone to seek support can affect anyone, regardless of their background, income, education or life experience. Many of the people who use our Family Works services are the same people you see every day in your community—friends, neighbours, colleagues or family members.
If you had the ability to change one thing to improve the life of the community that you serve, what would you choose?
Probably what I'd want for both the people we support and the staff who do this work every day would be for them to have self-acceptance and to be able to love themselves. So many of the challenges people face are made harder by feelings of shame, self-doubt or not feeling worthy.
