Member Spotlight: Human Nature

Kane Abbott is a Clinical Manager at Human Nature.

Tell me about what Human Nature Adventure Therapy does?

Human Nature adventure therapy provides outreach, counselling and therapy to young people who are 14 to 18 years old, generally people who come from a complex trauma background.

We provide support to those young people who can’t engage in therapy through conventional settings. We had one young person say to us, “All my trauma happened in a room. Why would I want to sit in a room and talk about it?”

We have some psychologists, counsellors, mental health social workers, and we take therapy to where young people are, and we engage them in spaces that they want to be engaged in. So that might be hitting a golf ball, it might be going fishing, it might be going for a bush walk or wading through the water at the beach. We are able to use all those different places to support and build rapport, engagement and connection with kids, who often have big difficulties in building trusting relationships with adults.

The structure and nature those sessions are completely co-designed around what they feel safe and comfortable to do. So, it is very much client led in that respects.

What kind of impacts are you seeing?

We recently had an evaluation done by Charles Sturt University. It’s really speaks to the validity of our work and the longer-term outcomes as well. We’re seeing improvements in young people’s ability to go on and get jobs and engage in study and work as well. A lot of research, it says having a job and purpose and a goal every day is one of the best things you can have for your mental health.

A lot of them are still living in ongoing unsafe situations as well. It’s not like this is historical trauma, it may be ongoing. It’s hard to make big improvements when the circumstances are continuing, and we certainly see a lot of that, particularly with housing and inflation and cost of living pressures and overcrowded classrooms and all the other sort of social issues that continue to impact upon young people’s mental health. It’s not so much just about what’s wrong with young people, it’s about what’s wrong with the macro environment that they’re living in.

You were nominated for an EVA award because of your leadership within your organisation. You’re based in the Northern Rivers, how did the floods of 2022 impact the people you work with? And how did your organisation respond? 

Well, I think it’s good to be clear that the flood was one of many floods that the Northern Rivers has had. It was significant because it was a very large one, but what it did was compound a whole suite of existing social issues.

The biggest flood around here probably is gentrification. It’s incredibly difficult for people to find housing, as real estate goes through the roof.

The impacts of the floods were significant for our team in different ways, because we all live across different areas of the Northern Rivers. Some staff were impacted and were not able to return to work immediately, and other staff were okay and ready to get on the ground and help with clean up. We immediately were able to prioritise all of our clients that we had on our books and start actually reaching out to them. Because they were in so many different situations. Some of them are some of them have had a very disconnected experience, like, I was fine. It rained for a week, and, you know, I live up on a hill. I didn’t see anything. I was cut off, and we couldn’t go to town, for example. And other people had, you know, endured and survived and had to be rescued or cut out of the roof.

We’re still recovering it. And it continues to compound the issues, particularly around housing – the availability of housing for young people is actually the lowest that it’s ever been.

We talk about fight or flight, the other element of that is flock. After a significant event, we flock. We come together and we connect, we debrief, we explain our stories and experiences and we meet our immediate needs.

We were sending out emergency packs. We were making referrals. We were providing immediate, basic counselling on the ground for people that were impacted. And we were trying to support and direct a lot of young people as well, who also felt powerless. A mitigating factor is being able to have some agency in the process. And so, it’s really, important to be able to direct people to where they could jump in and have an activated response, pick up a broom, sweep out someone’s house.

It was pretty challenging. We learned a lot. We’ve built a whole satellite system and, you know, isolated battery system, basically, so that we can set up like a satellite model, where we can have internet irrespective whether there’s power or not, we’ve got whole emergency system around that now.

We’re just always bracing for the next flood.