More Trained Staff Needed For Girls’ Centre

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31702, 11 June 1968, Page 22

More Trained Staff Needed For Girls’ Centre

(By a staff reporter of “The Press”) More girls from all over New Zealand are needing the type of care that is given at Kingslea Centre, Christchurch, and a need for more suitable and trained staff to work in this field has arisen.

An interview with the acting principal (Miss I. F. Pedder) makes two things quite clear. One Is that dedicated people like herself—she has spent 28 years at the institution—are worth their weight in gold, and the other is that to be effective in helping problem girls the centre must have the right sort of people. “The main problem is not so much to get people with the right qualifications," said Miss Pedder, “but to recruit staff who have the required personality and approach.”

She added: “You must remember we have everyone else's problem children here,

school drop-outs, failures and runaways; and we must try to help them.” Small Groups Miss Pedder said they could only be dealt with in small groups and this was why positions of housemaster and housemistress were so important. Girls sent to the centre were placed in various “houses” within the institution, progressing from the older buildings to better furnished and more recently built houses.

“These posts are for people who will work with a group of girls, play their part in the training programme and also in sport which fills an important role," Miss Pedder said. “But of course they must work at weekends, forgo their public holidays and many of the advantages of working at an ordinary job with regular hours,” she added.

“The people we are looking for must have skills and should also be able to counsel each individual child.” Miss Pedder made no secret of the fact that the girls at Kingslea “play up” from time to time. “This will happen in any institution of this type, but we have had to call the police only once in the last eight years,” she said.

This made it essential that staff were able to control groups of girls and nip trouble in the bud. “Girls are much harder to handle than boys, and in the early stages some are quite wild and uncontrolled,” she said. “But we usually find this lasts for a while and they get over this stage.”

She felt that the centre was fortunate in having a stable corps of senior staff dedicated to their jobs who had been at the centre for a long time. But as they retired, she felt there might well be greater difficulty in replacing them with people of the same abilities and dedication. Staff Training

Kingslea Centre is run by the Child Welfare Division of the Education Department, but there are no initial training facilities for staff in New Zealand. A staff training programme at the institution is augmented by lectures from visiting medical practitioners, psychiatrists, social workers and other experts. Staff later, where possible, attend training courses run by the Child Welfare Disision. Miss Pedder feels there is

one aspect which may deter men from taking posts at the centre, and this is the prospect of limited promotion. However, now that principals and assistant principals of girls’ homes were being appointed, there was more scope for advancement. At present. Kingslea serves the whole of New Zealand. Girls are taken in up to the tage of 16} but do not stay after they are about 18. What happens after their 18-month period in the institution? Miss Pedder points to a lack of hostel accommodation in cities as one problem, and says this is being met by a scheme providing for a family hostel. There was one near the institution at present and it housed six girls, Miss Pedder said. The idea was to bridge the gap between the institution and the community, and provide a home where girls settled down to life away from the centre, and away from the sort of life they were leading previously. In charge of the hostel were a couple who acted as foster parents. It had been open for four months, and it was too early yet to assess its effectiveness. “I have had to recall two girls who failed to return home at night, but then after the comparatively restricted life of the institution, this is perhaps to be expected,” she said. But land had been purchased for another such hostel and it was hoped to have this in use soon. Asked whether pressure on the accommodation at Kingslea was sometimes overtaxed because it was the only institution of its type in the country, Miss Pedder said the number of girls was limited to 100. But to allow flexibility and the opportunity to shift girls, she favoured fewer than this.

Never Sure She said another institution for girls was to be built in Auckland and this would relieve the pressure on Kingslea. Does the institution- have failures? “Of course we do,” said Miss Pedder. “We can only do our best. But many of the girls have no wish to return to their former ways. And we have many members of the community and a social club who keep in close touch with us and with the girls.” But you can never tell, according to Miss Pedder who tells the story of a girl who

had all the indications of being a failure at Kingslea. She was recommended for Borstal training and on the way to the Court hearing, the girl asked if there was anything that could be said in her favour. There was not. “But she begged the Magistrate to let her have another chance, and against his better judgement he agreed," Miss Pedder said. “She did improve and from that time on never looked back. We were wrong that time, which shows you can never be sure with human beings.”