Social Welfare Part 4

Volunteers continued

When I moved over to work with Maatua Whaangai, Ian Kilgour took over my role, and when I returned from that interlude I picked up the community volunteer work again. By now the Social Workers were housed in a building in Young Street. 

Ian Kilgour in 2013

By this stage my thinking had moved on.  DSW had a very good library service and I had read a lot about community work in theory and practice. In 1986 the Department asked me to attend a World Conference on Volunteering in Sydney. The Sydney Volunteer Centre had invited people from around the world and organised a great week of meetings and activities to encourage the work of volunteering.  There were five New Zealanders at the conference, including Pat Booth, whose parents had been colleagues in Tripura. 

I came back convinced that ultimately the work I was doing would have to be picked up by the community itself; community work cannot be done adequately from a base inside a Government Department.  But our programme was a good starting point! 

During the next year the Department asked me to meet with social workers in other regions and explain our work programme: I travelled to Timaru and Auckland on this assignment. Some years before this, George Barclay had moved away, and his place was taken by Peter Simonson, grandson of Rex and Ruby’s neighbour at Evelyn Place.

 

The Department of Social Welfare was by this stage being prepared to be split into two departments, one to join the Labour Department as Work and Income, and the other to be a stand-alone agency called CYPS, to work under the new Children and Young Persons Act, which for the first time incorporated some of the principles of Restorative Justice. 

Over this process the Volunteer Scheme was forgotten. Fortunately its work was eventually picked up by the District Council Community Development Section, and it is now run by our Restorative Justice colleague, Heather Dodunski.

 

A Different Tack 

Social Work team after end-of-year lunch at Pukekura Park Kiosk.

Terry Hickey is at far left with ray Roebuck behind him.

Gaye Watts is to the left of me, with Ian Kilgour behind her.

At right front is Murray Hickey, who died soon afterwards.

But I had had a break from the volunteer scheme from 1983 to 1985. Ron Nattrass had moved on on promotion and his place was taken by Terry Hickey.  Terry was the elder brother of Murray Hickey, one of our social work colleagues, whose life had been curtailed by a stroke before I joined the team. Terry and Murray were sons of Mrs Hickey, who had been the next-door neighbour of Margaret’s family in Omata Road many years before. 

Terry was a social worker with a great deal of common sense and a good sense of humour. He reminded me a lot of Frank Gee, my boss at Rangitoto College.  Terry had a “rule”: everyone was encouraged to play cards, Euchre, at morning tea time. He thought it was better to relax and think about something other than social work for ten minutes each morning. So we had uproarious games of euchre, with Terry as crazy as everyone else. I had never played euchre, but it was so like 500 and Oh Hell! That I had played, that I had no difficulty learning it. I came to appreciate Terry’s thoughtfulness about his staff in this and other numerous ways.