I have the privilege of being the Chairman of Trustees of the Franklin Family Support Trust. Although the ‘new’ Franklin is a district of the re-constituted Auckland City, the Trust serves the ‘old’ Franklin which is now spread across three different local bodies.
One thing that came as something of a shock to me is the number of various agencies and organisations, both Government and NGO that operate in the Franklin to help those in need. Some 80 or so!
I remember a story told to me by the previous CEO of the Franklin Family Support Trust, Jill Dean, on the scene that greeted staff first thing one morning at their Pukekohe Office. A young woman turned up with a couple of children. She was high on drugs, throwing up, and clearly distressed. She had decided she couldn’t stand ‘it’ anymore and was going to commit suicide. She didn’t want anyone to help her, she just wanted someone to take care of the children. It transpired the kids hadn’t been going to school, and when they did, they were disruptive. It seems they had no home. The tipping point was probably the eviction notice.
Just take a moment and try to think how many different agencies would need to be involved with the scenario to try and rescue this family, starting with the Trust, then the ambulance, then Child Youth and Family, and so on.
How does anyone who is highly stressed even begin the process of determining who they should turn to for help? And even if they could, now they have to find them then deal with the multiple bureaucracies. It is simply not going to happen.
According to Wendy Martin, the current CEO of Franklin Family Support, “Experience has shown us that people look for social services when they have exhausted their own resources and these barriers can become insurmountable to them”.
Wendy tells how The Trust set about developing a simple, one page common referral process for referrers (e.g. Health, Education and Justice) into social and community services. The aim of the initiative was to collaborate and form partnerships with the government sector along with all social and community service providers in Franklin to simply provide a common point of contact and assessment of need. "Government services struggle to link families to the NGO sector resulting in families falling through the gaps", said Wendy.
It has now been easier and quicker for individuals, health service providers, educators and the police to refer into services. Earlier, preventative, non-statutory, voluntary intervention, which makes better use of professional services and smarter use of available resources, can only result in healthier, stronger, safer, well-resourced and well-supported families.
Our community now benefits from decreased truancy, decreased crime and improved social wellbeing.
Wendy notes that, “Collaboration is the organisational expression of interdependence, an expression of exactly what we’re trying to encourage and build in our community. It’s my strong belief that if we, as service providers, can’t reflect this in our work, we can’t realistically expect this from our clients either”.
Wendy Martin, her predecessor Jill Dean and their staff and volunteers have worked over a number of years to get this concept accepted, find the seed funding, get the project underway and of course, continue to look for funding and resources to sustain it.
You can read more about this common referral system by reading the NZ Federation of Voluntary Welfare Organisations BLOG published by their Communications Manager, David Barrow. Go to their website http://www.nzfvwo.org.nz/ for more information and resources.
p.s. A year later, the young mother I referred to earlier, was well, in a housing corp house, the kids were at school and doing well and she had a job. All of that was coordinated and facilitated by the staff of the Trust.
