History of the Family Help Trust
The Trust's initial intensive family support service began in 1990, as a result of concern that children in the care of the Director General of Social Welfare all too often left that system in order to "graduate" into the prison system.
This first service was eventually named New Start and targeted a group of chronic offenders, focusing on their children, and providing intensive home-visiting family support and mentorship. The pilot service achieved encouragingly low levels of re-offending and measurable improvements in child health outcomes and family functioning.
New Start
New Start is the longest running service of its type in New Zealand, and still targets families where repeat criminal offending is a major issue and where the young child is the primary client and the key focus of the service.
In recent years the service has been streamlined and opened up to accept community referrals. Considerable effort has been made to ensure maximum accountability and transparency. The design of the service itself is based on international evidence-based practice.
In 1995 the Family Help Trust, with a strong intent of stemming the tide of intergenerational family dysfunction and disadvantage, acquired the funds to establish the Christchurch Early Start service.
With the assistance of Associate Professor David Fergusson (Christchurch Health and Development Study), key employees designed and later implemented Early Start for the following five years under the auspices of a separate governance board, with the Trust remaining as a shareholder with a primary interest in service delivery. Other partners joined this group, including Plunket, Pegasus Health and Maori representation.
Safer Families
Early in 2001 the Family Help Trust resigned its interest in Early Start and established a new service named Safer Families, made possible by a generous three-year donation from The Community Trust. Safer Families now stands alongside the Family Help Trust's original New Start service.
Following its experience with New Start and the post-birth complications for special needs babies withdrawing from methadone, suffering from foetal alcohol syndrome, and babies born before 24 weeks with neurological, sensory and respiratory difficulties, the Trust sought interest from midwifery services for an additional intensive long-term home-visiting service to begin early in pregnancy.
As a result of consultation with relevant groups, the Trust learned that the midwives had significant concerns that pregnant women with high psycho/social needs were falling through the cracks of local services, and that they were being obliged to provide additional services for which they were not trained.
While targeting high-risk mothers with new babies soon after birth was highly desirable, the Trust and the midwives believed that it was better to provide intensive support services both pre and post birth. They maintained it was an ideal opportunity to maximise good outcomes for infant/child bonding and breastfeeding difficulties, together with dealing with a raft of social problems related to improving the outcome for the unborn child.
Without such services and support, the midwives had become concerned for the outcome of babies born into high-risk situations. They said vacancies for appropriate intensive and long-term services were limited, and this was unlikely to improve in the foreseeable future.
Safer Families was initiated as a result of these concerns and viewpoints and was originally developed as a joint venture between the FHT and the Christchurch Women's Hospital Community Midwifery Team.
The referral protocols, and the establishment of clear criteria to ensure the inclusion of only those pregnant women who needed such a service, were carefully formulated to reflect this. To date, vote health has not contributed to this service, in spite of the fact that 90% of referrals originate from the health sector. By 2012 this had changed significantly as a result of major contracts with Child Youth and Family.
New Start Plus (Mothers and Babies in Prison) was initiated in 2008 as a result of new legislation that allowed for infants to remain with their incarcerated mothers until the age of 2 years.
HIPPY (Home Interaction Programme for Parents and Youngsters) Hoon Hay was created in 2011/12, now operating at Rowley Primary School. HIPPY is run under the umbrella of Great Potentials in Auckland.
This first service was eventually named New Start and targeted a group of chronic offenders, focusing on their children, and providing intensive home-visiting family support and mentorship. The pilot service achieved encouragingly low levels of re-offending and measurable improvements in child health outcomes and family functioning.
New Start
New Start is the longest running service of its type in New Zealand, and still targets families where repeat criminal offending is a major issue and where the young child is the primary client and the key focus of the service.
In recent years the service has been streamlined and opened up to accept community referrals. Considerable effort has been made to ensure maximum accountability and transparency. The design of the service itself is based on international evidence-based practice.
In 1995 the Family Help Trust, with a strong intent of stemming the tide of intergenerational family dysfunction and disadvantage, acquired the funds to establish the Christchurch Early Start service.
With the assistance of Associate Professor David Fergusson (Christchurch Health and Development Study), key employees designed and later implemented Early Start for the following five years under the auspices of a separate governance board, with the Trust remaining as a shareholder with a primary interest in service delivery. Other partners joined this group, including Plunket, Pegasus Health and Maori representation.
Safer Families
Early in 2001 the Family Help Trust resigned its interest in Early Start and established a new service named Safer Families, made possible by a generous three-year donation from The Community Trust. Safer Families now stands alongside the Family Help Trust's original New Start service.
Following its experience with New Start and the post-birth complications for special needs babies withdrawing from methadone, suffering from foetal alcohol syndrome, and babies born before 24 weeks with neurological, sensory and respiratory difficulties, the Trust sought interest from midwifery services for an additional intensive long-term home-visiting service to begin early in pregnancy.
As a result of consultation with relevant groups, the Trust learned that the midwives had significant concerns that pregnant women with high psycho/social needs were falling through the cracks of local services, and that they were being obliged to provide additional services for which they were not trained.
While targeting high-risk mothers with new babies soon after birth was highly desirable, the Trust and the midwives believed that it was better to provide intensive support services both pre and post birth. They maintained it was an ideal opportunity to maximise good outcomes for infant/child bonding and breastfeeding difficulties, together with dealing with a raft of social problems related to improving the outcome for the unborn child.
Without such services and support, the midwives had become concerned for the outcome of babies born into high-risk situations. They said vacancies for appropriate intensive and long-term services were limited, and this was unlikely to improve in the foreseeable future.
Safer Families was initiated as a result of these concerns and viewpoints and was originally developed as a joint venture between the FHT and the Christchurch Women's Hospital Community Midwifery Team.
The referral protocols, and the establishment of clear criteria to ensure the inclusion of only those pregnant women who needed such a service, were carefully formulated to reflect this. To date, vote health has not contributed to this service, in spite of the fact that 90% of referrals originate from the health sector. By 2012 this had changed significantly as a result of major contracts with Child Youth and Family.
New Start Plus (Mothers and Babies in Prison) was initiated in 2008 as a result of new legislation that allowed for infants to remain with their incarcerated mothers until the age of 2 years.
HIPPY (Home Interaction Programme for Parents and Youngsters) Hoon Hay was created in 2011/12, now operating at Rowley Primary School. HIPPY is run under the umbrella of Great Potentials in Auckland.