Kingslea director a long way from cleaning cloths

Press, 28 January 1988, Page 17

Kingslea director a long way from cleaning cloths

By SUE LANCASTER One of Marion Judge’s earliest memories of Kingslea home for girls is of being reprimanded for putting a cleaning cloth away incorrectly. A “real row” followed in which Miss Judge told the matron, “I did not come here to work with floorcloths, I came here to work with girls because I care about them.” Twenty-six years later, the woman who worked her way from matron’s assistant to head the South Island’s biggest Social Welfare Department institution, is still more concerned about the welfare of teenagers than how the floorcloths look. Miss Judge, the principal of Kingslea for the last four years, was recently announced as the director of the new Kingslea Resource Centre. The new Kingslea will combine girls from the home with boys from the Christchurch Boys’ Home. Kingslea is one of the options available to field social workers needing to place children in care. The young people have usually suffered a serious break with their families or been remanded from the courts. Miss Judge sees Kingslea as “resource rich.” It is hoped the new Kingslea will become a

resource centre for the community. Many of Kingslea’s neighbours feared the institution would become like a junior prison when the older and more sophisticated boys arrived later this year. “I’m determined that won’t happen,” she said. “We believe it will be an advantage to have boys and girls. The environment will be more normal and they will feel less segregated from the community than they have in the past.” When Miss Judge began at Kingslea in 1962, life for the girls was more formal and structured than today. Girls who did not make “progress” were discharged in disgrace. Miss Judge said they were usually taken to the airport early in the morning with no chance to farewell friends or staff. Girls were also sent to Kingslea without being told where they were going. A social worker might put the girl on an aeroplane and tell her she was going on holiday. "Often our first job was to get her over the shock of being here and help her to settle in.” In the early days, the emphasis was more on removing the girls from society and containing them in a safe environment, rather than treating

their problems. A Karitane nurse for several years, Miss Judge saw Kingslea as a challenge — a way to help people less advantaged than herself. When she first won the job as matron’s assistant she was surprised because she had no skills to manage children. “That’s really what has kept me here,” she said. “I really felt quite shocked that society placed its most disadvantaged and damaged young people into a special place but didn’t provide the experienced people to deal with them.” Although many people with “tremendous vision” had worked at Kingslea during the last 25 years, changes were difficult to make because they were restricted by the social expectations of the day, she said. “My modelling is people who had one day Off a week and worked here from seven in the morning until 10 at night, and who never complained.” Miss Judge is reluctant to accept the credit for many of the initiatives at Kingslea in recent years. However, her colleagues say she has been determined in her efforts to get rid of the "stigma” attached to Kingslea. New programmes she had been involved with included a parents’ support group, the Kingslea cultural centre, the Kohanga Reo, the Pacific Island Support Group, I.H.C. use of Kingslea and a young mothers’ support group. The support group was set up 12 months ago in

recognition of a survey that showed 53 per cent of girls who left Kingslea became pregnant within 18 months. Miss Judge said she hoped Kingslea would be used for a day care programme for preventive work with teenagers to help them before crises occurred. She has also for many years held a dream of establishing a half-way house for teenagers leaving Kingslea. In spite of the institu-

tion’s new developments, Miss Judge believes there is still work to be done. “I don’t like a messy place where anything goes, but a place where individuals are respected and courtesy and consideration are part of the normal environment,” she said. “If I could genuinely achieve that from every staff member and the majority of young people, that I would consider to be my greatest achievement.”