Press Articles about Family Help TrustMaking learning hip: Jane Dunbar: 8th November 2012 Holding a pencil. Drawing a straight line. Recognising shapes and colours. For some new entrants at schools, these skills are a challenge. As one teacher puts it: “I have five-year-olds in my class, but it’s like teaching three and a half year olds." And if children start school without the basic skills their peers have, it’s very difficult for them to catch up.
. . . . . . . . . . . . Libby awarded Winston Churchill Fellowship Community and Voluntary Sector Minister Hon Tariana Turia today announced the recipients of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowships for 2011. One recipient was Family Help Trust's Libby Robins, who will visit prisons in the United States and Scotland to investigate different ways of working with female prisoners and their infants in order to promote attachment and reduce re-offending. . . . . . . . . . . . . Toddlers can go to jail with mum Toddlers up to two years old will be living with their mothers behind bars by the end of the year. Women's prisons in Christchurch and Auckland are upgrading their facilities to comply with a law passed in 2008. But Arohata Prison, in the Wellington suburb of Tawa, will not accept children older than nine months, because the steep terrain is unsuitable. The babies will not live in prison cells but will stay with their mothers – and other minimum security inmates close to release – in "self-care" units. . . . . . . . . . . . . SMELLIE SNIFFS THE BREEZE: Wero for Whanau Ora Down in Christchurch, for the last 20 years, the Family Help Trust has beavered away creating one of the best early childhood intervention programmes in the country, creating futures for families that the statistics would normally be first to write off. They are doing God’s work. If anyone should thrive under Whanau Ora, it’s committed, innovative, independent organisations like this which have survived more in spite than because of government efforts in the same fields. . . . . . . . . . . . . Sterilisation unnecessary when less extreme interventions will stop child abuse Act Party law and order spokesperson David Garrett polarised public opinion last week. Comments in his party's blog, on recommendations from the Minister of Social Welfare's expert panel on child abuse prevention, incited both vehement support and outraged opposition. Mr Garrett had suggested that parents who abuse their offspring should have their "rights to have more children … constrained," although he subsequently maintained that he was not necessarily advocating sterilisation, just trying to stimulate debate. Click here to see older press articles in our News Archive |
