Ian Neil
Rob Prior and Jo Dunlop recently caught up with Ian Neil, CEO of Pivot Support Services to hear about the amazing work Pivot Support Services does in the community.
Firstly Ian, can you please explain what Pivot does?
Pivot started in 2004 as a re-entry program, helping prisoners reintegrate into the community. We’d meet with prisoners about six months before they’re released, start getting their affairs in order and then, once they’ve been released into our community, continue to support them for twelve months. That’s where we came from.
The genesis of where we are now, came from working on recidivism by addressing disadvantage. Our premise at Pivot is that, our core business is prisons but don’t deal with the “prisoner”, deal with the “disadvantage” that the prisoner comes from as that’s where the solutions are.
So we started a Community Hub, which is unique in Australia. It covers around 10 Domains of Need. Anyone who comes into Pivot has their needs assessed with reference to these domains and if there’s anything unmet, we either assist or refer them on depending on their requirements.
We’ve been running this now for three years and it’s totally successful in every way. We saw about 460 people last year through that service. But it’s unfunded. So we’ve now gone into the NDIS space, which is hopefully going to assist generate the funds required to run the hub, to allow us to address the disadvantage and reduce recidivism.
We’re still effectively providing the same service as we were back in 2004, it’s just a different and better way of going about it.
What’s your role at Pivot?
I’m the CEO at Pivot and get involved in everything. Reviewing legal contracts, reporting, board and governance, dealing with adhoc operational issues and also anything else that comes up – including cleaning toilets!
My main role at the moment is to spend the next three years getting Pivot into a place where it’s sustainable, robust and has a good governance framework around it. That’s my vision and I hope to take our staff on this journey with me.
How did you get involved in this line of work?
I have a local government background. My father was the Mayor of the town that we grew up in, so I understood local government from an early age and later enjoyed working in this space. After this I started my own business doing strategic and business planning around Albany.
But then I got really sick. I completely lost my voice and couldn’t speak for over six months. In the end, thankfully my body rectified itself. I just woke up one morning half a year later and all of a sudden I could talk again!
It was from there, once I recovered and could speak again, that the Chairman at Regional Counseling tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I could come and help them out. That was six years ago.
Tell me more about losing your voice?
I caught some type of virus that attacked the nerve and paralysed my vocal cords. This lasted for seven months. I couldn’t speak at all. I saw a specialist in Melbourne who told me if it lasts more than six months then it’ll definitely be permanent. I tried using a slate and all sorts of ways to communicate. It was an interesting journey. But I got through it, even after the six months. I just woke up one morning and suddenly I could talk again. I was a bit croaky and sore but, amazingly, it just happened quite suddenly. It was an interesting journey because by then I had thought it was permanent and I was already attuned to this being my new way of life with no voice.
How did this affect your outlook on things?
I learned the art of reading conversations. Because I couldn’t interact, I would sit and watch all the interactions going on around me. I had the time to just sit still, listen and observe.
For example, I learned that if someone’s got something to contribute in a conversation, they physically lean into it and switch off to everything else until they find a gap in the conversation to put in their piece. So they lose part of the conversation as they stop listening whilst trying to contribute.
I also learned what it’s like to live with a disability, even if only in a minor way and for a short period. I found it very difficult to get a job during this period because I had no voice. As a consequence, I definitely have empathy for people who have a disability.
My voice is about 85% now so there’s some things I can’t do. For example I can’t laugh anymore. I also have no projection but that’s fine, I’m good with that.
You were invited to present recently at a TEDx talk. Can you tell us about that experience?
It was a good experience. I asked the audience at the Ted Talk, “How many people have experienced, in any significant way, what prisons are like?”, and virtually no one put their hand up and I said, “Well, six years ago I was exactly like you! But now, I’m an advocate for prison reform. So, what’s happened in that six years?”.
Then I told them my story and about us addressing disadvantage in the community to reduce recidivism. The first thing I learnt at Pivot is that you can’t be elected to government in Australia unless you’re perceived to be tough on law and order and the people who vote for governments believe locking people up and throwing away the key – is being tough on law and order. Until that mindset changes, nothing else is going to change.
Jailing is Failing. Our current prison population around Australia is exploding. For example, our prison here in Albany was built for 180 people, but it currently has about 400. Not one cell in this prison meets the international standard for prison cells either.
Our premise is not to build more prisons, but instead make fewer prisoners.
Social justice seems to be a strong theme in your life. Where did these values originate from?
I often channel my Dad. Dad was not only the Mayor of the town, he was the JP, he sat on the bench, he was the guy that people came to when someone in their family was in trouble.
I grew up in a town that was very multi-cultural, it had what they call the Enterprise Hostel, in a place called Springvale, in Victoria. The Enterprise Hostel is an immigrant hostel. When you come to Australia you go to the hostel and then you are allocated somewhere to live. Where I grew up, it started with the old Ten Pound Poms, then in the 80’s it became the Vietnamese, then it became Eastern European and now it’s very ‘Horn of Africa’. So, all those migration shifts… I experienced them as part of my life.
And my dad was in tune with that… that need... and it was nothing for a Maltese family to turn up at our front door with a whole lot of food, cooked for the Neil Family because of what Dad’s done for them. So you talk about social justice, that’s where it comes from.
What’s the one thing that you want to do more of when you retire?
Spend time with Debbie (my wife). That’s it. She wants to travel, she wants to get away, so I’ll just ride on her coat tails.
I think, existentially, I want to find the stillness. I heard someone talk once that the secret to happiness is a contented mind. And I believe that. It doesn’t matter where you are. That takes away all the rules, and all the culture and everything. It doesn’t matter who you are and where you are, if you strip everything back to that. I think you’ve got to find a place like that.
