KEY POINTS:
Name: Lesley Max
Age: Silence is my policy on this one.
Role: CEO of Great Potentials.
Working hours: Around a 50-hour week
Average salary: Not-for-profit salaries are usually lower than in the for-profit world.
Qualifications: MA (Hons), teaching qualifications from UK.
Describe what you do:
I'm CEO of Great Potentials, which is a foundation established to help children, young people and families to flourish.
We introduced the Hippy programme (Home Interaction Programme for Parents and Youngsters), the Mates programme (Mentoring and Tutoring Education Scheme) and we developed the Family Service Centre model. As our name suggests, these are ways that allow people, from children up to adults, to find their potential. Our programmes operate in 21 communities nationally and in 10 secondary schools in Auckland.
Your history?
I grew up in Auckland, went to Takapuna Grammar and Auckland University, married Robert Max, and went with him to England where he studied orthodontics and I taught in a secondary school. We came home and had our four children. I stayed home with them but also got involved in IHC, then worked from home as a freelance journalist, before writing a book Children: Endangered Species? which led directly to co-founding our foundation. That was in 1990.
It was originally called the Pacific Foundation. The name change was made last year to better reflect the wonderful changes we were seeing in people.
You have been quoted as saying you want to alleviate children's suffering and release their potential. How do you go about achieving this?
I quickly realised that you couldn't do much to alleviate children's suffering without making changes in parents. I pursued that by setting up the Family Service Centre model, which offers assistance to parents in a variety of ways. I also push for more effective public policy, which means work through the Parenting Council, which I chair, and lots of persuading in Wellington.
Why did you choose this line of work? You say having a son with Down syndrome introduced you to the world of special education ... a very different world?
I realised that having a mild intellectual disability was in some ways less of a handicap than having what you might call psycho-social disadvantage, so I moved from activity with IHC to what I'm doing now. Our son, Jamie, has been an inspiration, because he has achieved so much. We didn't realise his potential until I followed the suggestion of a speech therapist and started to teach him to read. He absolutely blossomed from that point.
What sort of training/experience do you need to do this job?
There's no specific training. Tertiary education is a help. So is some life experience. Being a teacher, a mother, a journalist and a community worker were all helpful. So is an interest in politics and ideologies.
Experience in running a business would be useful. In my case, I supplement my skills with brilliant assistance, for example, from our foundation's accountant.
What skills or qualities do you need?
Strong commitment, perseverance, the ability to talk, persuade, which often means to find the right metaphor to connect with people's ability to imagine and empathise. It is also necessary to be able to conceive and to articulate a vision and lead people towards making that vision a reality. But that can happen only when you find and retain the skilled staff who can translate vision into action.
Why is your job important?
If we have abused and neglected children, we have educational failure and people who are unable to contribute to make our society safe, flourishing and prosperous.
What is it about New Zealanders that we consistently have cases of children being abused and maltreated?
We provide insufficient support to parents to get it right and we allow them much too much leeway to damage their children when they get it wrong.
Are we making any headway?
Hmmm. Too soon to tell.
Most challenging part of the job?
Finding the money to enable parents and children to release their potential. Working to convince the Government that it has some wonderfully useful tools it can use to help reach its own goals.
The most rewarding part?
Seeing the faces of the children graduating from Hippy; seeing their beaming parents; seeing the proud young people who have completed their year in Mates.
And seeing families find the expert help they need at our Family Service Centre.
It must be a hard job at times? How do you cope with the job's more emotional aspects?
I try harder to make good things happen for more people.
Where would you like to be in five years?
Watching thousands more people having access to what we provide and they want.
Advice to someone wanting to do the same thing?
Be prepared always to listen, to learn and to persist.
donna.mcintyre@xtra.co.nz
