Feature
Catholic Social Services in action
Lesley Hooper, Director of Catholic Social Services for the Archdiocese of Wellington
As we start 2015 we can look back over 60 years of Catholic Social Services (CSS) supporting the poor and vulnerable in our communities. The call of the gospel is a still as strong today to ‘love one another’ (John13: 34) by ‘providing food for the hungry; give water to the thirsty; welcome the stranger, clothe the naked; care for the sick and visit the prisoner’ (Matthew 25: 35,36).
In 2014 we were reminded over 200,000 New Zealand children live in households that rely on income from benefits; that children in poor households are more likely to grow up with poor health and fewer opportunities. As a result New Zealand is now one of the lowest ranked countries for child wellbeing, health and safety among the wealthy countries in the OECD.
On a daily basis CSS sees the impact that inequality has on people on very low incomes. Our counsellors and social workers in 2014 supported approximately 500 individuals and families. They helped with finding appropriate housing, accessing the right benefits, and working with people to deal with issues such as depression, self-esteem, relationships, anger management.
One of our social workers took part in the Auckland Benefit Impact project in August. She was among a large group of benefit advocates from throughout New Zealand who volunteered their time for three days to help over 550 people access benefit entitlements from Work and Income. For many, their needs were basic such as beds, washing machines, fridges and medical-treatment costs.
We have worked alongside the Night Shelter, Soup Kitchen and Downtown Community Mission to support people living on the streets of Wellington and we are part of the Street Outreach Service, which in August took part in the first ever count of those sleeping rough in the streets. The aim was to connect homeless people to social services and to provide information to help services to get resources to people who need them.
We have also taken part in workshops on the Te Mahana: Ending homeless in Wellington strategy led by the Wellington City Council.
As we focus on our work for 2015 we are reminded of Archbishop John’s opening statement for 2006 Synod: ‘Being there for those in difficulty, for refugees and migrants, the poor and the lonely, for the victims and perpetrators of violence and abuse, is a non-negotiable requirement if we are to be faithful to our vocation to be at the service of the world.’
This year we will be working with the Salvation Army and the Refugee Family Reunification Trust to support refugees and their families; we’ll continue to be part of the Street Outreach programme and ensure adequate housing for those who come to us in need; we’ll be working with similar agencies on the Government’s proposed changes to social housing; and we want to keep reducing family violence by working with offenders and their families to bring positive change.
Our work today is as important as it was in 1955 when Catholic Social Services started. Our staff are totally committed to being there for the many vulnerable people who come to us for help and support and we are ever appreciative of those who provide financial support to enable us to do this work.
How you can help CSS
Our work requires funding. We are dependent on the goodwill of the community and on assistance from various governmental, community, religious and archdiocesan grants, philanthropic trusts and Lotteries New Zealand. Some clients make donations towards counselling costs but many are unable to contribute and we don’t expect them to. We don’t turn anyone away.
Funding for our work is also greatly helped by the 450 members of our ‘1000s club’. Our aim is to have 1000 members donating $100 a year.
Another important source of funding is our Street Day Appeal, held on the last Thursday of February. Each year we reach out to the people of Wellington to donate money and we will be out collecting on Thursday 26 February. Last year we collected about $10,000 to help fund our counselling and social work services.
The more collectors, the greater the presence and the more money we can raise. If you would like to help keep our work going you can join our 1000s club and commit to donating $100 annually, make a one-off donation or give one hour on 26 February to collect somewhere in Wellington for our Street Day Appeal.
Call us on (04) 385-8642 or email us on reception@wn-catholicsocialservices.org.nz if you would like to help.
Charity as a responsibility of the Church
Archbishop John Dew
‘Love of the neighbour, grounded in the love of God, is first and foremost a responsibility for each individual member of the faithful, but it is also a responsibility for the entire ecclesiastical community at every level… As a community, the Church must practice love.’ Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict XVI’s 2005 encyclical on Christian love.
Every baptised Catholic is invited by Jesus ‘to love one another as I have loved you’ (John 13:34-35). We do this in a practical way: food to the hungry; drink to the thirsty; welcome to the stranger; clothe the naked; visit the sick; and visit those in prison (Matthew 25: 31-46). In our communities and parishes there are many people who hunger and thirst for human dignity and the necessities of life. Others are imprisoned in loneliness and addiction. This links worship and the service that Christ requires of us: ‘In so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers or sisters of mine, you did it to me’ (Matthew 25:40).
As a church, our charitable work is organised through our parishes, schools, religious orders, St Vincent de Paul Society, Catholic Social Services, prison and hospital chaplaincies and many other organisations. Much is done by individuals quietly, generously and unobtrusively.
Every baptised person knows the call to reach out to others who are in need, and they are aware this is a Gospel imperative. A Catholic perspective invites us to go beyond a simple understanding of charity: ‘The practice of charity is not limited to alms-giving, but implies addressing the social and political dimensions of the problem of poverty’ (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church).
Wel-Com here presents an insight into some of the work carried out by Catholic Social Services in the Archdiocese of Wellington, by the social outreach agency ACROSS in the Diocese of Palmerston North, and by St Vincent de Paul Society throughout New Zealand.
Wellington’s Street Outreach Service
Catholic Social Services is involved with the Street Outreach Service to enable the street community to move at their own pace to a safer, healthier and more sustainable living environment.
The service, set up in 2013, is supported by 12 organisations that volunteer time, and offer a variety of social and health services. It covers mainly central Wellington, Newtown, Miramar and Kilbirnie.
A roster system has two people checking twice daily on those in need around the different areas.
Catholic Social Services joined up with the Street Outreach Service in 2014. Every fortnight, our social worker Trish Heward accompanies Steve from the Soup Kitchen to make contact with people who may need assistance.
They work in a low key, friendly and sensitive way.
The Soup Kitchen provides free meals to those in need, and connects with new members of the street community in a positive and confidential way.
Street Outreach Service offers assistance such as help with finding permanent or emergency accommodation, advocacy for benefits, medical care, meals, employment, clothing, family social work, pastoral care, free showers and laundry, budgeting and more.
CSS: 60 years of working for vulnerable people
Love your neighbour as yourself (Matthew 22:34)
Since Catholic Social Services was established in 1955, we have done much to build programmes and provide support to help the poor and vulnerable in our communities.
In 1989 Cardinal Tom Williams said ‘the role of social-service agencies is changing as society changes and new needs emerge.
Those who pioneered Catholic Social Services after the Second World War recognised what was required then, and they acted. But they could not have conceived what would emerge as core activities half a century later: aiding victims of physical abuse, training in non-violence, anger management and self esteem, counselling in schools, court referrals, work with youth at risk and providing help for the housebound.
Many of those issues are still with us today but how we respond has changed.
Over the years our work has included:
- Support and counselling on adoptions
- Garindale in Nelson – residential care programme for boys.
- Kairos at Hill Street, Wellington – accommodation for young adults
- Work programmes
- Golden wheels – fresh fruit and vegetables to housebound people
- Group programmes – supporting women experiencing violence
- Group programmes in schools – violence prevention as well as self-esteem and suicide support for young people
- Family support worker – in collaboration with St Vincent de Paul in Newtown
- A family support worker – for schools in southern suburbs
- Learning courses – parenting; cooking and budgeting classes;
- Living-without-violence programmes
- Counselling for individuals, couples and families
- Social work support for refugees
- Social work support to the housebound and homeless
- Counselling and social work support to school children and their families
We will continue delivering social services to those most in need in our community and advocate for wider changes for the poor and vulnerable.
All people live and flourish in communities characterised by charity – love in action.
Preventing family violence
Over the last 40 years Family violence has emerged from behind closed doors and is now recognised as a major social problem in New Zealand.
In 2014 the Department of Corrections launched the pilot of its Community Family Violence Programme.
The programme primarily focuses on men who have committed family violence. It targets key, dynamic risk factors including attitudes and beliefs, emotion regulation, substance abuse, relationship and parenting skills.
After attending training for the pilot in August last year CSS counsellors Tracey Burge and Gail Teale are now actively engaged in delivering the programme to clients referred by the Department of Corrections in Wellington and Porirua.
The programme consists of 13 ninety-minute individual sessions on a weekly basis. It has a strengths-based approach that emphasises a client developing new coping strategies and skills to manage potential high-risk situations in the future. Although this is a structured programme, there is room to tailor the content to specific needs of a client and their learning style. Sometimes translators are used where English is not a client’s first language.
Te Whare Tapa Wha is weaved throughout the programme and asks clients to consider the impact of family violence on their spiritual, physical, emotional, and family-whanau wellbeing.
Our involvement with this programme is true to our values and commitment to reducing family violence in the community. Our holistic approach also means that where issues of housing, medical, social isolation, or benefit-advocacy arise, CSS social workers are able to support clients.
Safeguarding culture
On 2 February we celebrate the Feast of the Presentation – of Jesus at the temple – Jesus’s first encounter with His people and acknowledgement that He belonged to the chosen people of God. The feast brings a message of hope and encouragement. It recognises in all the ‘messiness’ and struggle in our lives, there is confidence God has a plan for us.
This is important in our Church and society where we are confronted with a culture of past and present abuse – physical, sexual and emotional – and the legacy on all those affected. Abuse has been particularly damaging when there has been sexual abuse by clergy or religious.
As a response and sign of hope, New Zealand’s Catholic bishops and religious leaders want to develop a culture of ‘safeguarding’ within our Church and faith communities. An initial step is the development of a training and awareness programme for our priests, religious, staff and volunteers. The programme will help build an inclusive Church where everyone is safe – particularly children and vulnerable adults.
The early work has been delegated to the National Office of Professional Standards, responsible for overseeing the process of all abuse complaints received in the Catholic Church in New Zealand. As part of developing this safeguarding culture, CSS in Wellington has provided training for priests and pastoral leaders about good professional boundaries. We are also working with Maria Noonan, NOPS educator and leader, as she develops the programme and implementation plan. CSS and Maria are working in St Anne’s Parish, Newtown, as they begin to identify learning needs and structures helpful in a parish context.
The programme will encourage everyone in various church community roles to foster a safeguarding culture within our different faith communities. It involves understanding the fundamental values, beliefs and attitudes at the core of the Gospel message. This shapes our values and principles for a safe and nurturing environment so that in our ministry we may be a light to our wider society.
Our work here at Catholic Social Services brings us across many families and individuals who struggle to provide for their children or themselves.
This is particularly at Christmas, when we celebrate the birth of Christ.
Families and people young and old who live on their own are delighted somebody has thought of them during this Advent time with a special treat.
Our social workers’ office becomes a colourful and chaotic ‘Santa Grove’ with generous gifts from many Wellington Catholic parishes.
In addition to these gifts for Christmas 2014, the Justice, Peace and Development Group from St Thomas More Church of Otari parish gave us $700 cash.
With this donation that they had worked hard to collect we were able to purchase legs of ham to give to several families along with the gifts.
This extra treat was gr
eatly appreciated.
Our staff is very grateful to everyone who supports us and enables us to give a little bit of cheer to the people and families we work with during the year.
A joint working relationship between Catholic Social Services, the Refugee Family Reunification Trust and the Salvation Army Central Division was formed in September 2014 to support refugees in Wellington. The new relationship draws on the strengths of each agency, aiming to provide better support to people from refugee backgrounds who have been assisted by the Trust.
CSS will provide social work and counselling support to the families when they arrive. Families may need help in securing long-term accommodation, accessing benefits from Work and Income, or help with getting their children settled into a local school. Salvation Army will meet the new arrivals’ food, furniture and clothing needs for the first three or four weeks. The Refugee Family Reunification Trust will continue to provide financial assistance to bring refugees’ immediate family members to join them in Wellington.
Family reunification is the major concern for former refugees living in New Zealand, and is a foremost part of successful refugee resettlement. Refugees’ pre-occupation with re-unification can be a barrier to successfully resettlement.
Refugees who come through the Refugee-Family-Support category or as sponsored partners, parents or children, are classified as migrants. They do not receive the same support that ‘quota’ refugees do. Quota refers to the limited number of officially allowed refugees who are outside their home country because they have suffered or feared persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, or political opinion, or because they are fleeing a war.
This places a huge burden on the refugee sponsor who is already struggling, and also hinders their ability to resettle and to contribute to New Zealand society. It can take many years for the sponsor to get their application accepted and processed by Immigration New Zealand. There is a high financial cost to lodging the application and paying the airfares once the visas are approved and issued. The sponsor has to be able to prove once the family members arrive they can provide appropriate accommodation and, in some cases, guaranteed employment for the adult family members.
In 2014 the Refugee Family Reunification Trust assisted families originally from Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Iraq, and Uganda. Many had been living in refugee camps before coming to New Zealand.
CSS is working with some of those families and we will continue to work alongside the Salvation Army and the Refugee Family Reunification Trust to better support refugees and their families in Wellington.
Community outreach through ACROSS
Graeme Munford, Director of ACROSS.
ACROSS Te Kotahitanga O Te Wairua was started up in 1990 as a partnership between the Catholic and Anglican parishes in Palmerston North. At that time ACROSS – Anglican and Catholic Social Services – expressly aimed to reach out and support groups at crisis point. Today we offer a range of programmes and services for children and their families, including counselling, support groups for children and one-on-one support for families in their homes.
We also offer support to individuals.
Our name represents the importance of caring about people’s lives through their spirit (wairua) and working alongside others, including other churches, as an expression of solidarity (kotahitanga).
ACROSS is governed by a board of three representatives from local Catholic and Anglican parishes. This model of working together is unique. While both churches share the same values and aims, pooling resources was the initial motivation 20 years ago and it has gone on to be an extremely successful outreach for both denominations. Our team of faith-based and professional staff and facilitators has grown from small beginnings to serve our community and to ensure no-one is left behind.
We are now well known and advertise our programmes and services through churches and other community organisations. As a community agency there is no expectation for people to pay for our services. We are now seeing second-generation families with some still recounting their earlier experience of ACROSS as being the light at the end of the tunnel.
There are many ways people can contribute to our work and be part of our programme, eg by sponsoring a family or one of our programmes, offering time on our committee, volunteering or foster parenting.
We rely on feedback to help ensure we are providing the right sort of help. Examples of how people can support us are best reflected in feedback we receive. A person who had received counselling at ACROSS said: ‘For me the big thing was that someone followed up when I didn’t feel like seeing or hearing from anyone – I don’t know what would have happened if they hadn’t bothered.’
Others have said the most transformative thing for them is that ‘staff did what they said they would do’, especially when often their experience of relationships was others had let them down. A common theme is that people respond positively when they feel they are simply being treated fairly and their individual circumstances are respected.
A challenge for agencies like ACROSS is to be recognised by the churches they represent as integral to their own outreach.
Because of the practical work we do, agencies such as ours are the heart and soul of community. However, we should not leave the care and concern for others in our community only to such agencies. We must all show each other the seeds of what Jesus called ‘The Kingdom of Heaven’.
Please visit www.across.org.nz for more information.
Anne Marie McCarten, National Executive Officer, St Vincent de Paul Society in New Zealand.
The Society of St Vincent de Paul has a long and proud history of helping people in need in New Zealand. Throughout the Archdiocese of Wellington, the Palmerston North Diocese and the length and breadth of New Zealand, the Society has been providing assistance to many in need for nearly 150 years. In 2017, we will be celebrating 150 years of ‘people helping people’ in New Zealand.
The Society has been a large part of the Catholic community in New Zealand since it first began in New Zealand in 1867 to help those affected by poverty. Thanks to volunteers and Catholic community support over the years, we are still able to provide the help and support to those in need.
The Society helps families and individuals with practical support with food, clothing and furniture, emergency accommodation when needed, b
udgeting advice, advocacy, and family support. Our local St Vincent de Paul conferences (membership groups) give a hand-up to those in need in their areas.
Conferences are always looking for different ways to connect with their community to raise awareness and donations for their vital programmes. They rely on donations as well as income from Vinnie’s shops to support their work. With community support they can directly fund programmes and foodbanks.
A recent fashion parade at the Vinnie’s shop at 52 Rangitikei Street, Palmerston North, was a huge success. Models showcased clothing from the shop and the ‘Manawatunes’ – an all-male barber shop group – entertained.
Many parishes have their own conference or have joinesd with other parishes to form a combined conference. The amalgamation of parishes in Seatoun and Miramar enabled two conferences to join together.
Over the last eight months this conference has helped more than 50 clients, made over 150 visits to individuals, families and rest-home residents. Students at local Catholic primary schools have been supported with uniform items, activity lessons and stationery. And many new members have turned out to help with street-day appeals.
A successful appeal held at PAK‘nSAVE Kilbirnie showed shoppers’ generosity and compassion with their donations of food and cash for the Society’s Foodbank at Wellington Area Centre, Newtown.
Donations of quality goods are always gratefully received at any Vinnie’s shop. Visit the website at www.svdp.org.nz for shop contact details. And new members to the Society’s conferences are always welcome.