About us

The Now and Next Youth program was born out of a collaboration between Plumtree Learning and The Fast Track Inclusion Trust.

Plumtree Learning is an organisation founded and run by parents raising children with special needs.

It aims to build family capacity through participation. It accomplishes this by running evidence-based programs to increase families' empowerment, hope, agency and wellbeing.

In peer groups (face to face or via zoom), parents and carers learn  to:

• Formulate  and achieve inspiring goals for their children

• Build novel positive  partnerships with professionals

• Optimise their informal networks

More on Plumtree Learning impact here.

Our team has extensive combined experience in the program co-design methodology, in facilitation and in local connections and networks. 

Dr. Annick Janson is an Associate at the Centre for Applied Cross-cultural Research, Victoria University of Wellington, past Research Director at the NZ Leadership Institute, University of Auckland Business School and Research Director, Microsoft NZ. She is the c-President of the New Zealand Association of Positive Psychology and Fellow of the Gallup International Positive Psychology Institute. Annick trained as an educational psychologist with 20 years of experience and lived experience raising her adult disabled son. Her special interest in youth development and network building in the disability sector. Annick is Co-Founder and Research Director of the Now and Next and Keys to Lead suite of programs for youth and families. Rolled out in New Zealand, Australia, Finland and Canada, this Research and Development program pioneers the implementation of Positive Psychology in the Health & Disability sector as an alternative to the traditional deficit-based medical model.

Kylee Black is a young disabled leader from Hamilton. She has a Diploma in Communication and Expressive Arts from the Bethlehem Tertiary Institute, Tauranga, as well as a Certificate in Film and Television through Lifeway College. Kylee has her own public speaking brand, KyleeBlack, where she empowers and encourages others, and advocates for equality. She is the founder of Spirit Sparkplugs, an organisation that works to improve the lives of people living with medical conditions. Kylee lives with Ehlers Danlos syndrome, Complex Regional Pain syndrome, and other diagnoses. These conditions require she be tube fed, have an ostomy, and a portacath. “I’ve learnt effective tools and have put things in place to be living my best life. Some of the things I love and find most important to me and my wellness are the connections I make, especially with friends and family. They are everything to me”. Kylee leads the youth stream at the Keys 2 Lead conference - it is important to finally trailblaze a communication and mentorship path between families and disabled youth - we have so much to learn from each other - for the common good. 

Janine Morrah has lived experience with disability. She teaches at tertiary level in Linguistics, Human Development, Anthropology and Management. After tutoring and lecturing for 20 years, she shifted into the Disability sector, supporting youth and their family/whanau of those with needs. Working with youth inspires Janine to do better and consider things from more than one point of view – There's more than one way to get to the same end point and she has found that the journey to get there has more meaning than that final goal attainment. “I find that I learn just as much from those keen enquiring minds as they do soaking up the knowledge I bring for them to take and shape in their worlds”.

Melissa Janson: Growing up as the sister to a neurodiverse person has been a powerful experience. Melissa believes that societies can benefit enormously, when people with disabilities are supported in such a way that they can contribute and share their gifts, as her brother has. She especially enjoys working with other siblings. In the past 6 years she set up an on-site Positive Behaviour Support team at a residential service provider, made up of about 180 people with disabilities and upwards of 500 staff. Together with her colleagues, she worked to create a space of wellbeing rather than crisis, by training staff in simple evidence-based strategies to use with people they support everyday. She has joined Now and Next, as she knows that this wellbeing and prevention work should start early. She is excited about teaming up with families and supporting their unique journeys.

Trainees

Yaniv Daniel: A young artist on the spectrum has developed a set of tools to support peers grow wellbeing as they achieve their goals.

Aimee Tarant: A young woman with a Cognitive Disability is passionate about supporting her peers achieve their goals.

Since our 2015 launch, we have published a large body of research, video testimonials, presented at national and international conferences and published in peer-reviewed and wide public journals. Our group is supported by researchers from 10 Universities (more details here). Please see these resources at: https://now-and-next-alumni.blogspot.co.nz and our list of publications here.

Lastest press article

NZ Herald article

A programme designed to help young people make better decisions for their future is about to take off in Dannevirke.

The Citizen You programme, facilitated by Janine Morrah and Annick Janson of Plumtree Learning, will be held at Tararua REAP next week.

Morrah said Citizen You was a pilot programme being tried for those aged between 11 and 23 for the first time.

She said it had been created with the help of funding from the Eastern and Central Community Trust.

The programme used positive psychology techniques.

"It's basically goal-setting and goal-getting so it's a visioning tool that the individuals work on by themselves," Morrah said.

She said her role as facilitator was more to guide the participants, rather than teach them what to do.

"It's their own thoughts, their own goals, their own aims that we then assist them to work towards. We help them strategise and start to see what's possible. And the ways to get it successfully."

Instead of each participant starting with a high goal that might not be so easy to reach, the goals would be broken down into achievable steps.

They would then be able to build on those steps.

Morrah said it was like being the "ambulance at the top of the cliff rather than the bottom". By catching young people early enough, she could show them what was possible, instead of them getting into trouble.

"The opportunities for trouble are a lot more public and quite often catastrophic in the sense that they become absent from our culture rather than having the ability to say, 'Well, I've stuffed up and I'm going to make amends here'."

Another part of it was showing the participants that even when they didn't succeed at something, they could try something else instead of giving up.

The programme had been chiefly aimed toward those who had been disadvantaged in some way, but Morrah said the definition of that was fairly loose.

"It might be that you might not be meeting your milestones at school. You might have some kind of unrecognised disability or mental health sort of situation," she said.

It was also more about giving people the wherewithal and the tools to make decisions they were comfortable with, rather than reacting to events or expecting someone else to do things for them.

Morrah said the hope with the programme was to identify those who took part as peer facilitators so they could go on and train to deliver the programme to their peers.

"They feel enabled and empowered to go on and continue this process, having experienced it themselves. And that's much more effective."

She said by doing so, it would strengthen the community with people coming through the programme that could better support others in their community.

Morrah had worked with Tararua REAP in the past and one of the things she liked about doing this programme with them was that it would complement other courses they offered.

"I think the pairing with Tararua REAP has been phenomenal. They're very responsive to this. And they really do see that it's got very real potential. The working partnership with them I think is just incredible."

Once the pilot programme had been completed, Morrah and co-facilitator Annick would take a report back to the trust. The hope was to get enough funding to continue offering the programme to the wider community.

"We believe that this is of value to the community," Morrah said.

Warr, L. (April 2022) Dannevirke programme aiming to help young people decide their futures, Hawkes Bay Today (scroll below)