JustCommunity is a human rights and dispute resolution consultancy incorporating cultural & faith literacy and therapeutic jurisprudence, psychology.
JustCommunity specialises in culturo-legal advice, including to lawyers, courts, Corrections and Police in a range of cases.
- Social Support
Facilitating culturally-inclusive positive social support. Cultural and spiritual social support as a foundation for reintegration objectives. Context-specific but founded on key principles of engagement, critical thinking, modern approaches, traditional and spiritual frameworks. This maybe a mix of pre-established positive social circles and newly formed circles, in order to replace anti-social influences and environments, and replace these with strong, community-grounded pro-social circles while honouring the individuality, unique needs and development of each individual and their unique journey.
- Family Support
Dependent on availability and strength of familial connection and related circumstances of each case. Involves developing and accentuating rehabilitation-compatible sources of family support and exploring utilisation of these to provide either a family-rooted foundation for the program, or a whanau-based safety net of positive emotional wellbeing and/or logistical everyday support, or somewhere in between these two. Particular risks may need to be addressed, including the risk of conflict with siblings or in family environment based on e.g. differences in cultural and/or religious understanding or application. Some coaching on intra-familial communication and/or conflict-resolution given the dynamics of each case will also be appropriate.
- Cultural Insitutional Support
Regular, periodic reporting to a community institution and/or figure, if available, for guidance or sharing of reflections on the ongoing process. If a cultural and/or religious institution or figure is not available or otherwise suitable, whether one is appropriate to explore or develop will be considered. This may depend on the value of a community-symbolic and substantive or even authoritative supervisory oversight in each case. This will also depend on the suitability of the community institution and their adaptability to the program objectives and principles. The resources (incl expertise) available to facilitate and ensure the adaptability of a community institution may also be a factor.
- Scholarly / Re-education Support
This may entail providing traditional, cultural or theological foundations as a way comprehensive framework for rehabilitation philosophy and motivation. This can entail a full re-education program (re-)establishing the foundations of beliefs, practise as well as the critical role of cultural or religious psychology in the rehabilitation. It may otherwise be limited to the role of culture, tradition, or faith in remodelling problem areas or providing microcosmic symptom-specific services, such as anger management. Any curriculum will be approved under the guidance of authoritative scholars from the relevant tradition, with particular attention to addressing issues common to the relevant case in the context (e.g. extremism, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, domestic violence, sexual offending, dishonesty) of the local environment and the client’s specific circumstances. In all cases it will seek to provide for re-balancing, re-centering and re-discovery of identity, discovery of self, and integrated well-being, as well as addressing specific deviations, imbalances or unhealthy (e.g. superior) or anti-social attitudes.
- Health and Wellbeing Support
Incorporation of traditional principles of whole-person health — integrated both modern (“allopathic”) and natural systems of medicines. Clinical advice for the client’s own wellbeing and introductory teachings of principles to empower the client with the ability to sustain balanced wholesome physical, emotional and spiritual health, and retain the relevant principles that will sustain both a connection to and development of well-being literacy based on the models relevant to the patients cultural heritage. This may also extend into ethical living and concern for social and economic concern for self and others, promoting accountability and transparency literacy.
- Wraparound Support
Facilitating, arranging and screening daily work and life arrangements, and provision of complementary services (including supplementary state income, medical services, legal advice, other pastoral care, referral assistance to other family members), in order to both ensure compatibility and compliance with the letter and spirit of the overall rehabilitation program. The objective of wraparound support is to prevent lapse and to meet the other conventional objectives of such intensive support, but it is also to support the wider rehabilitation regime by helping to root the client in a functioning spiritual and emotional ecosystem. While resource intensive, provision of assistance to this wider eco-system in which the client needs to be re-rooted, is the only sustainable avenue of reintegration within a functioning environment. Interaction with and some facilitation of, that environment is often unavoidable. Basic vetting such assessing human dynamics within a work environment as being conducive to, or at the very least not undermining of, the overall rehabilitative process are also important components to a birds-eye view of the client’s integrated existence.
The JustCommunity Board relies on the services of senior professionals with “community-literacy” — knowledge & experience of NZ communities — not only as clients but as communities:
- Clinical Psychologist(s)
- Founding Director Aarif Rasheed
- Cultural/religious advisor(s)
- Criminologist
- Academic or expert in any of the relevant area(s)
- A traditional as well as modern-medicine health consultant(s)
- Lawyers with regulatory/advisory experience, including for the Crown
All professionals must have previously worked or engaged with comparable community-based individually-tailored assistance.