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The purpose of the workshop was to follow up the results of a Community Forum conducted by CNF in September 2019 in order to guide the CNF Executive in future priorities and programme development.

The workshop was attended by 25 people all engaged in some form of social or community activism in the Franklin area. After each person introduced themselves a series of work group discussions took place with their focus on six areas of interest, concern and direction that had been identified at the CNF Community Forum in September 2019.

The six areas for focus and discussion:

• CNF to develop a community of INFORMATION AND SUPPORT
• CNF to source and offer resources to explore and enable COLLABORATION between and among community organisations seeking to work together
• CNF to source and offer training for EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP AND PARTICIPATION in community and voluntary organisations
• CNF to provide a focus for organisations for sourcing and applying for FUNDING
• CNF to develop understanding and resources to promote CULTURALLY APPROPRIATE EVENTS AND PROGRAMMES
• CNF to source and offer a CONTINUING TRAINING PROGRAMME for workers in the community and volunteers

The work groups provided extensive responses to each of these areas of discussion and these have been compiled into a comprehensive report to guide the CNF Executive in the next steps of programme planning and activity. A number of participants offered their assistance with specific areas of work and this is appreciated by the CNF Executive who will make contact with these people when those areas of work are developed.

In addition to all the detailed responses a number of overall themes emerged from the work groups and in a brief plenary discussion:

• There is strong support for CNF developing a network of communication through a range of media and with a strategy based on “branding – fresh look – fresh wave – youthful”

• There was recognition of the challenges of getting a message or information across to targeted audiences within a considerably fractured communications environment.
• There is recognition and interest in providing support for organisations seeking to work collaboratively with others.
• There is support for a programme of relevant and accessible training opportunities and recognition of the expertise and resources available within the local community.
• There is considerable interest in programmes to assist with funding applications.
• There is strong recognition of the need and opportunity to build culturally appropriate events and programmes, to respond to the impacts of ignorance and prejudice in the wider community, and to celebrate bi-cultural foundations and multi-cultural diversity.

The CNF Executive thanks and applauds all those who took part in the workshop and contributed their input to the planning and development of future activities. The Executive has undertaken to work through all the responses and design forthcoming programmes as guided by this expression of community voice.

Contact: 

Jan Wallace     027 452 1366 or email at Jan.wallace@xtra.co.nz

Cherie Milne   cnfcherie@gmail.com

26th August 2020 / 10:00 AM / via Zoom

ATTENDEES

Welcome

Jan Wallace welcomed everyone to the meeting and all participants introduced themselves and the groups that they represent.

Guest Speakers – Rachel & Alex from Odyssey

Te Puawai Aroha 

Te Puawai Aroha is a 4 day programme that Odyssey provide which is fully funded under supporting parents, healthy children initiative, providing hot lunches and transportation costs.  It is a brief intervention for the whole whanau where the care giver has a mental health or addiction diagnoses with children between the ages of 8 to 16.  

Over the 4 days the children attend from 9 to 3 daily, whereas the care givers or teenagers come later in the afternoon for the hot lunch and parental groups.  The last day of the programme is a family fun day which is spent together building connections and memories, visiting places like Rainbows End or survival training programmes. 

The programme is run in the school holidays in April, July and October and is available for families that reside in the Counties Manukau area.  Participants must be referred by a mental health or addiction services or by their GP.  The focus is to provide learning about mental health and addiction, resilience and connections through playing games and having fun.  Also providing skills and coping strategies to deal with what the family has been going though already. Also connecting families that have had similar experiences to reduce the sense of isolation.  Transport is covered by taxi chits and petrol vouchers as the parents need to be available to drop the children off and attend the lunch and paternal sessions. 

Each group is learning what the whanau has been learning so that they have the same information and can work together as a team.  It is a great place for the participants to discuss really personal things and get tools to strengthen them as a family and navigate the difficulties that they are trying to overcome as a family. 

In the next school holidays, it will be run at Manukau City Baptist Church for the first week and at Elim Church for the second week. Each holiday the programme is held in a different area, a multi-use venue is required as a facility, the programme has not been run in the Franklin area yet but is being planned for next year. 

Odyssey School Programme

All the staff members who go into the South Auckland schools are drug and alcohol counsellors, low decile schools to help young people make heathy decisions around drug and alcohol use. Offering one on one and group counselling courses, working with counsellors, nurse and social workers although 90% of the cliental is self-referrals.  This can be the clients having issues with drug and alcohol or maybe a family member having issues. The groups are static as young people can enter and exit the programme depending on the support that they require. 

Update from Andrew Beyer on Community Networks Workshop held 25^th September 2019 

From the workshop that was held last September a number of themes where identified by the community groups. There were representatives from the community groups, Iwi and voluntary organisations who used the Forum to explore some of the community issues facing Franklin. There was a subsequent meeting attended by the various community groups who went through the workshop report and from that six themes were identified and prioritised:

1.Continue to strengthen and further develop a community of information and support for the member organisations  – monthly community meetings to continue as a source of information and inspiration and organisation and networking, electronic newsletters that is a useful point of gathering and spreading information and connection and exchange between our member organisations, to develop the CNF website with links for member organisations and skills and knowledge exchange and feedback on projects like the expo and community forums.  

There is a community noticeboard in the foyer at the Franklin Centre where organisations can put their brochures.

2.Develop a focus for exploring and enabling collaboration – how do you match up organisations that could work together, have a section on the website seeking collaboration where groups can detail what they need or can offer, success story of collaboration. What information training or systems can CNF offer to assist in collaboration. This could also be represented on the website to provide a process for people to seek and identify potential collaborators. The website and other forms of communications could be identified where stories of collaboration could be collected, to show that working together can be valuable. Need to assess what skills or systems are required for organisations to enable collaboration?

3. Effective leadership and participation – enhancing and building on peoples skills, managing sensitive information in a confidential and trustworthy manner. How to establish what the pool of resource and knowledge is within the member organisations.

To provide training for community groups on how to access and apply for funding.  

4. Training programmes and opportunities – CNF need to test and evaluate what training is required and how best to deliver the training. 

The attendees of this workshop are likely to want to provide input on more than one topic, some thought on how this can be achieved on the day.

Promotion of the next community meeting and this workshop is reliant on the COVID gathering restrictions being changed to allow for more people to gather.

Other business

First Aid Training

Pukekohe Community Action needs to do First Aid training and if possible if there were other community groups where interested in attending this would spread the cost over a number of community groups.  

Food parcels

Pukekohe Community Action is working alongside a number of agencies who have food parcels available. The numbers requested has being increasing, and the border restrictions have created some challenges getting food parcels into areas outside of the Auckland boarders.  

The food parcels contents are changed depending on if the person bakes or makes soup.  The COVID guidelines are being followed in preparation and delivery of food parcels.  The basic food parcels that PCA are handing out have a value of $120 with the cost of nappies and baby formula addition to this.

Border restrictions

There has been a lot of confusion regarding the borders and who can cross and what paperwork is required to be able to cross.  For some people who live in Tuakau and Pokeno it has been added pressure when you could not cross the border for Doctors visits or to do grocery shopping in Pukekohe. 

Port Waikato MP Andrew Bayly is working in the community to assist with issues of crossing the border, this lockdown has been very stressful as some of the issues regarding the borders having not been anticipated.  The guidelines on crossing the borders have not been as clear as they could have been.

Using PPE

Where community service groups are operating across the borders they are following COVID PPE protocols for level 3 even if they are working in a level 2 area.  Also if transporting anyone in a community services vehicle they are being asked to sit in the back to maintain a distance from the driver.  It is also essential that the COVID app is being used while out and about in the community.

People are wearing masks but are not necessarily wearing them correctly, or changing them often enough if using disposable masks and also disposing of them correctly. If using a reusable mask how long should the mask be worn before it should be washed.  People are removing their masks to eat or talk and then putting the mask back on but may have contaminated the mask.  Make sure that you are practising good hygiene practises by washing hands and using hand sanitiser. 

Next meeting: 23rd September 2020 at The Franklin Centre, The Stevenson Room, 12 Massey Avenue, Pukekohe, this is dependent on number of people being able to gather changes from the current 10 people.  

Meeting closed at 11.45