In April 2023 Matt transitioned from his work as a school counsellor to take up a full-time teaching role as a Lecturer at Laidlaw College. He is now engaged in the teaching and delivery of the Bachelor of Counselling programme at Laidlaw, a role which includes a research-active aspect.
Matt initially began his professional counselling journey at Laidlaw College, having completed the Bachelor of Counselling in 2013. He has since completed a Master of Counselling through the University of Waikato, with research a component of that. His research involved working with young men in secondary schools who had been caught up in violence. The research focused on shaping counselling practices that invited the young men into preferred positions that sought to build on anti-violence/peaceful practices and ways of being.
Since training at Laidlaw, Matt has worked as a counsellor within NGO community agencies and schools. Across eight years Matt worked in several secondary schools spanning the length of Auckland. He is passionate about working with young people, and within his counselling work seeks to excavate the stories of their skills, knowledge, hopes and preferred ways of being in the world. The research Matt has been involved with is still being furthered, and the hope is that future counselling practices can stem from these research explorations.
Narrative therapy, and its project of inviting people to consider themselves within the stories they tell and are told takes up a special place within Matt’s professional counselling work. Among other things, coffee, music, and football are keen interests that Matt holds dear.
Matt was brought up in a large family in South Auckland, where he still lives with Amy, their son Marlow, and their dog Mowgli. He and Amy met in high school, and in 2012 they got married during the completion of Matt’s studies at Laidlaw. They both work within the context of mental health and consider these roles as vocations as opposed to simply “jobs”.