Family-support plan for Chch suburbs

Press, 21 December 1981, Page 6

Family-support plan for Chch suburbs

A family-support project will be started in the Aranui and Bromley suburbs of Christchurch next year.. • The neighbourhood-based project would be designed to help families having problems th ’ coping with social pressures, said the Minister of Social Welfare (Mr Young) in announcing the scheme. Mr Young said that the project would try to strengthen the family and the home environment 'for children.

The scheme is a co-opera-tive venture between the Government and Barnardo’s New Zealand. It also has financial support from the Welfare Services Distribution Committee. Barnardo’s will run the service and meet a fifth of the scheme’s total cost. The Social Welfare Department will provide 40 per cent of the total-cost.

Families having difficulties in home management, family relationships, managing on limited incomes, emotional or' health problems, and child behavioural problems will be able to use the service.

? The Christchurch programme will be similar to a pilot project started in South Auckland in 1979.

Mr Young said that welfare services at present did not adequately meet the extent of the types of problems that the new service would encounter. Services now available tended'to be largely involved with crisis intervention, rather than doing preventive

welfare work that required long-term, in-depth support. The new project’s workers would not be professional social workers, but members of the local community chosen for their ability to respond to the pressures and problems that faced families needing support.