Whatever you need...serving shaken communities

It began with a volunteer cleaning a kitchen. Four years on, The Salvation Army’s Christchurch Primary Schools Support Programme supports 12 schools and thousands of pupils.

The Schools Support Programme began in June 2011 when then Salvation Army earthquake recovery manager Bruce Coffey and staff member Jocelyn Smith began discussing ways to help struggling schools after the Canterbury earthquakes.

Jocelyn approached Woolston School, offering to do whatever they needed. The first thing she did was clean the school hall kitchen, unused since the quakes. Then she made the teachers cups of tea and listened to them talk.

In five weeks, Jocelyn was leading a rapidly expanding schools team that has worked in more than 21 low-decile schools, with more than 3000 children.

The problems were huge: earthquake trauma, job losses, families living in overcrowded, broken, damp, freezing houses or garages, and increased illness. The support worker’s motto became ‘to bring help, hope and smiles’. They sat with sick kids, organised meals, ran holiday programmes, bought stressed teachers coffee, and connected parents in desperate need with Army services.

‘We used to talk about how many people we made cry today —in a good way,’ Jocelyn says.  

Four years on, in a house converted to offices next to Sydenham Corps, Jocelyn listens to Schools Support workers Tracy Boon and Beaven Turner discuss their work with tears in her eyes.

These days, individual Salvation Army corps (churches)—Christchurch City, Linwood, Sydenham and Christchurch North (previously Belfast)—oversee the programme in their area. The support workers have changed, the schools and children have changed, and they’ve added new programmes, but ‘it’s the same heartbeat,’ Jocelyn says.

Dream job

Across town, at Christchurch City Corps, Hannah Kendrew chats enthusiastically about doing her dream job. Hannah works at Mairehau and Shirley Primary Schools and has been a Schools Support worker since 2012.

Her story is typical of what the support workers do. She runs a First Steps with Music group, a before school breakfast, an adults and children playtime, and coaches hockey and basketball. Some

Children didn’t have the right hockey gear and risked missing out, so the school and corps combined to find a solution, she says.

Much of the support workers’ role is devoted to children with behavioural issues or learning difficulties. Hannah uses the friendships she builds with the children to support them in class. Since February, she’s been helping a pupil in a first steps to literacy class for seven and eight-year-olds.

‘He couldn’t do the alphabet,’ Hannah says. ‘He could say it, but not put the cards in the right order. I was able to work with him one-on-one for an hour a week and now he only occasionally gets “m” and “n” muddled.’

In a shed turned into an office at Linwood Corps, Hayden Mundy oversees support workers in seven schools. Hayden has worked with troubled kids for 17 years and with the Schools Support programme for four.

He says, ‘People ask me what a typical day is. I say, “I’ve had days digging hāngī pits, days shovelling snow, and days sharpening pencils.” There’re some standard things you do, but if there’s a crisis, we drop what we’re doing and help. For me, I see the hope and potential for kids. Seeing that one child that breaks through is great.’

Hayden credits cooking and personal time with one of his best successes. ‘I spent a lot of time one-on-one with one kid. He had a history of truancy and involvement with youth services, but he was a really lovely kid. I took him cooking, helped him with healthy eating, which was good because I know he was often left at home to fend for himself. Eventually, we started cooking lunch for the staff, rebuilding the trust that was well and truly broken. My aim for him was to go on school camp and then get to to the end of the school year without being kicked out, and we made it!’

At each site, it’s a different version of the same story.

Beaven has been working at Wharenui School since April and coaches two teams and runs an Aspire group. Anna Chirnside does a cooking class and mentors a group of girls at Linwood College, while the school garden is central to Nakita Halleen’s work at the new Rawhiti School in New Brighton.

‘When it’s play time, I jump in the veggie patch and the kids come too,’ Beaven says. ‘If I’m not there, they come and ask, “Why aren’t we doing gardening today?” [The job is] such an opportunity to build relationships with the children in a fun way.’

One-on-one or small group time gives the children a focus they don’t often get, and the confidence to take risks and be who they are, especially with someone who’s not a teacher, Anna says. ‘A lot of kids need someone to have time to look past the behavioural issues and see the potential they have. If you give them the opportunity of responsibility, it’s incredible how they step up.’

Serving amid quake stress

Much of the Schools Support work is about building confidence and social skills battered by quake stress and regular life issues. There’s a sense among Cantabrians that the rest of the country is sick of hearing about the earthquakes. Cantabrians are sick of them too—physically sick and emotionally drained.

Canterbury school children had twice the rate of flu this winter to anywhere else in the country. They’re battling years of daily disruption—house moves, school mergers, still damaged roads, closed shops and broken buildings. Behaviour problems are up, and new entrant teachers are increasingly doing preschool work as the first children who’ve known nothing but earthquakes reach school.

Beaven tells an all too common case of a boy whose family have moved into a motel while their house gets earthquake repairs. ‘In the last three weeks, he’s only been at school five days. It’s the combination of being sick, stressed and not having a home, just a motel room to go to and a change of clothes that has to be washed every day. He may have been sick before, but this is all on top of that.’

Tracy sums up the feeling of many when she says, ‘For myself, I haven’t been not tired in five years. I don’t remember what it’s like to live like that.’  

The support workers are there to help teachers as well. They do everything from making staff lunches to finding volunteers for fun days so teachers can join in. Last month, Linwood Corps organised business donations for surprise pamper packs to help teachers at a school that’s doing it tough. Some staff become friends outside of school, and Tracy was asked by teachers at Waltham to be in their staff photo this year.

They also work closely with parents. Emily Smith-Johns, one of the original support workers, says in the early days they organised a lot more large-scale practical support. The needs are still there, but now tend to be dealt with individually at a more personal level, she says. A mum broke down last week, opening up to Emily about her depression and urgent budgeting issues. Hannah is also supporting a grandmother with cancer.

Hayden says he still gets surprised by the impact small gestures can have. ‘Last week, we had a whole lot of wallpaper dropped in. It was huge amounts, so I put it out and said to the families, “If you want it, grab it.” One woman ran over and bundled up a whole arm full. She said, “You don’t know how much this means. Our house isn’t insured. We’re trying to do it up one room at a time and now I can wallpaper my daughter’s room. It won’t be fixed, but it will cover some of the cracks.” ’

They’re also looking to the future, helping empower disempowered parents. Nakita is helping parents advocate and find funding for a community garden to be included at the new Rawhiti school site, when it’s built. At Waltham School, Tracy helped establish a parents group. This year, the parents have taken over running a school soup day Tracy ran. They set up a Hot Food Friday, heating children’s lunches, are organising a swap meet and, with Tracy’s support, have formed an informal parents’ association that meets with the principal and works on initiatives to strengthen the school community.

‘The cool thing for me now is that I’ve been working myself out of a job. So, I’m now working out what’s the next phase—and it’s about building those relationships deeper,’ Tracy says.

Wider support programmes

Salvation Army churches have developed programmes to further support the school work.

Tuesday afternoon and 40 children carrying instrument cases weave in a crocodile line across a business centre carpark and into the old office/shop space that serves as the Christchurch City Corps’ hall. Inside the hall, which has half its ceiling panels missing, tutors are setting up for the Just Brass programme that teaches children from Mairehau and Shirley Primary School to play brass instruments.

Started last year, Just Brass provides pupils free instruments, small group lessons and a weekly band time. Teachers and parents tell them it improves children’s concentration and self-confidence. Some join the corps junior band. Some come to their Friday night Seven Up kids drop-in, Hannah says.

Back at Linwood on a Thursday afternoon, 11 kids are having a blast, playing games and making cupcakes at the weekly afterschool Core Kids programme for children from each of Linwood’s seven schools. Core Kids started as a homework club, but gradually become a wider after-school programme, Hayden says.

‘We had two kids who, the first week, wouldn’t get out of the car,’ he remembers. ‘The second week, Mum was trying to drag them out of the car and they were clinging on to the door frames. I’ll never forget it. They just didn’t want to be around people and crowds. But after a few weeks, they were asking to get here early.’

Seventy school families attended a recent movie night. Some also send their children to a monthly Kids Sunday service, though all the support workers are careful that they go to serve, not preach and don’t discuss their faith unless asked to.  

Looking back, Emily says the Army should be proud of what they achieved. After the quakes, many organisations offered help but had to reduce services over time. despite ongoing needs, while the Army was able to remain.

The support workers’ worry is that their funding, originally from The Salvation Army Canterbury Earthquake Appeal Fund, is running out and they could be the next agency forced to stop. They’re hopeful someone will come along and support them to keep going.

In the meantime, there’s an ongoing sense of hope and excitement from a group who speak of landing a privileged role through unusual times. ‘If you tried this in another city, I highly doubt you’d have the same result—it wouldn’t work,’ Beaven says. ‘It’s a job, but I don’t look at it as a job. Every day I go in acknowledging the privilege of doing this.’

Serving Aranui Primary School

For an independent view on the Schools Support programme, I head to Aranui Primary, where it has been working since mid-2012.

It’s a slow, frustrating drive, weaving through potholes, around road works and road closures. Inside, principal Mike Allen does a tour, showing off the classrooms, brightly repainted by the Deliberate Acts of Love to All team (another post-earthquake Salvation Army programme, that gives jobless people volunteer work on community projects).

It was very different when the street’s sewer main burst in the 22 February earthquake. ‘All this was flooded in sewage,’ Mike sweeps his arm to take in most of the school: paths, a sports court and the field. Children and staff waded through sewage to their emergency assembly area to find it had turned into giant hole, so they waded back. On windy days, the liquefaction increased already rising respiratory problems. They removed eight trucks’ worth.

The one road leading to the school hasn’t been fully open since. It’s been pulled up and re-laid six times, with two more to come. Mike has school parents working three and four jobs to get by and families with 14 people in a three-bedroom house.

Through it all, staff work hard to give a calm, positive space for children and a fresh learning experience—and the children are more engaged than ever, he says.

Schools Support workers Hayden Mundy and now Emily Smith-Johns have been invaluable, he says.

Emily does a communications course with some pupils. She takes others for a cooking class; they’re kids who work better in a small group and it helps them have fun, Mike says. However, Mike’s first description of how Emily helps is, ‘By being happy, bringing chocolate and coffee!’

Those small caring acts—like Hayden coming back in his free time to help with kapa haka—make a community who’ve lost so much feel special, he says.

‘We had a snow day in 2013. We didn’t have many kids, but the staff were here, and Hayden went out and bought everyone fish and chips. The staff were really grateful. It made them feel cared for.’

At the end of this year, Aranui Primary and three other east Christchurch schools will close, replaced by one new school. When asked if he’ll advocate for a support worker at the new school, Mike barely pauses before describing it as being just as important as getting the right teachers. ‘It’s critical,’ he says.

---

by Robin Raymond (c) 'War Cry' magazine, 5 September 2015, pp5-7
You can read 'War Cry' at your nearest Salvation Army church or centre, or subscribe through Salvationist Resources.