To the Max

A veteran child welfare reformer says there  is still a lot that needs to be done to help our young people.

On the subject of child welfare, Dame Lesley Max would give New Zealand a reproachful report card. Comments such as ‘must try harder’ and ‘needs to work more cooperatively’ would surely feature.
The founder and chief executive of the Great Potentials Foundation, which supports children, teenagers and their families, contends that we as a nation are failing miserably at what should be our most important task: ensuring we raise happy, healthy, well-educated and caring individuals who will ultimately help us all to prosper.
A recent United Nations report condemning New Zealand’s ‘staggering’ rates of child abuse and poverty and calling upon the Government to take ‘urgent measures’ to improve child welfare came as little surprise to Lesley, who has advocated for children’s rights for more than 20 years.
“We need to take an integrated and strategic approach to the issue,” she stresses. “Of course, families have prime responsibility for raising their children, but they work within the structures of our wider society. If that wider society takes a totally laissez-faire approach to how families function, you get what we see now – a majority that does well and a substantial and growing minority that does badly.”
In Lesley’s view, helping parents and primary caregivers to better relate to, encourage and educate their children should be the cornerstone of this strategy.
“Put simply, children are the product of their parents’ capacity. Where parents are immature, unstable or unduly stressed, lacking in knowledge and skills or lacking in positive guidance and support, children are unlikely to realise their full potential.”
In her work with the Foundation, Lesley oversees a Family Services Centre in the South Auckland suburb of Papakura as well as three programmes designed to help children, teens and their families at crucial transition points: to primary school, secondary school and tertiary study.
Lesley, who was made a Dame Companion of the Order of Merit for her services to children in 2009, says the work has proven that children’s relationship with their parents – their first and most important teachers – is a key determinant of their future health, happiness and capabilities.
“Children need an experience of being loved and appreciated for themselves. They need parents who are warm and authoritative – who take the lead in the family without being overbearing. They need to have their basic needs met and to have the encouragement to enjoy learning. They need kind and imaginative guidance as they form their own attitudes and behaviours and set their course in life. And they need parents who are there for them forever.”
Although she recognises children living in poverty are at a distinct disadvantage, she is adamant that, if they have good parents, they will do well.
“Poverty is not the overwhelming factor it is often represented as being. In New Zealand, poverty is relative rather than absolute, as in third world countries. But where you have relative poverty coupled with limited parental capacity, this provides a poor outlook for children.”
She says almost everyone who attends the parenting programmes at the Family Services Centre – either by choice or because CYFS has directed them to – has suffered a troubled childhood of their own. Many have issues with anger, alcohol or drugs. She explains that the centre aims to show mums and dads that their personal demons needn’t prevent them from being good parents themselves.
The centre encourages parents to become more conscious in their parenting and to consider better how their words, actions and attitudes affect their children. These are lessons Lesley believes all new parents should be taught, irrespective of their circumstances.
“You’d be amazed by how many parents habitually speak roughly and gruffly to their children. Wonderful things happen when they discover how to be gentler in their voice and approach.
“I believe now, as I believed 20 years ago, that it is essential that we equip every young person who goes through our education system with some knowledge and skills about parenting. It’s ludicrous that we don’t. That must change.”
The Government’s major social ministries spend about $72 million a year on parenting programmes designed to address everything from child abuse to youth offending. Prime Minister John Key has introduced at least four initiatives, the effectiveness of which Lesley says she will be watching with keen interest.
In her view, however, the Government’s approach is far too fragmented; a consequence of its “silo structure” which tries to force everything into clearly defined categories.
“The fact is that some things – child welfare included – are relevant to multiple areas of Government. But our system does not provide for common or pooled funding.”
She would like to see the Government adopt something similar to Australia’s National Early Childhood Development Strategy, which addresses multiple areas that impact upon children’s wellbeing and development, including health, safety and education. Endorsed in 2009, the strategy encourages a collaborative approach to improving the welfare of all children, involving the government and non-government sectors as well as families.
As well as being too narrow in scope, Lesley believes New Zealand parenting programmes fail to reach our neediest families, largely because parents find them stigmatising and confronting.
“These opportunities tend to be taken up by those with less pressing need and more confidence and capacity. It’s sometimes called ‘middle class capture’.”
A major reason the Foundation’s Government-funded ‘Hippy’ programme has been so successful, she contends, is that it is home-based. Qualified coordinators, each responsible for up to 70 children and their parents, select and train several parents they consider will make good paraprofessional tutors. These tutors then help other parents to prepare their children for school. Parents are encouraged to spend 15 minutes a day – for a total two years – on specially designed activities with their children. Centred around storybooks, they improve children’s literacy and strengthen the bond between parent and child.
Lesley says the programme, which operates in 27 low-income areas, has proved hugely popular with children, parents and teachers alike.
“Teachers say children who have been through Hippy are streets ahead of their peers,” she enthuses.
Although Lesley also recommends pre-schoolers receive formal early childhood education, she reiterates that their relationship with their parents is of primary importance.
She says parents typically enjoy – and derive as much benefit from – the programme as their children.
“They are more closely bonded with their children afterward, and they always tell us they have more patience. Those who have worked as tutors also develop a range of other invaluable skills: reliability, time management, the ability to deal with confidentiality, recordkeeping, accountability.”
The sense of joy and empowerment parents experience when they realise they can give their children an excellent start at school is, for Lesley, one of the most rewarding aspects of her work.
“It’s also a privilege to know that some children are going to bed feeling more loved and secure because of us,” she says.
The Foundation’s programmes for young people making the transition to secondary school and tertiary study also work to strengthen their relationships with key role models. Those starting out at high school are partnered with trainee teachers, while those transitioning to tertiary study are teamed with mentors from the University of Auckland.
Lesley describes convincing “the powers that be” of the validity of programmes that prioritise children’s relationships with their parents and other role models as her greatest challenge, along with raising the requisite funds.
Now in her seventies, Lesley is as enthusiastic and unwavering as ever in her dedication to the Foundation and her other child advocacy roles, as chair of the Parenting Council, Patron of the Family Help Trust and member of the Brainwave Trust and the Family Services National Advisory Council.
Her ultimate goal, she says, is to make a real difference to as many families as possible, while finding time to enjoy life with her husband Robert, an orthodontist, four children and two grandchildren.
Lesley appreciates she was fortunate to be born into a “stable and loving home with wonderful parents”. While she describes her childhood on Auckland’s North Shore as “pretty normal”, she admits most of the families she works with would consider it anything but.
Despite her sheltered upbringing, Lesley says she was aware, even as a very small child, that you couldn’t take anything for granted. Her Jewish family had many friends who had come to New Zealand as refugees after the Holocaust and, as a keen listener to adult conversations, she knew “terrible things could and did happen to entirely innocent children”.
After the birth of her second child Jamie, who has Down Syndrome, she became more actively involved with children’s wellbeing and development. Accompanying him to school in Glen Innes, where she says many children were living in troubled situations without opportunity, she began to question the way society did – or didn’t – safeguard and nurture its children.
She worked as a secondary school teacher for several years before switching to freelance journalism so she could stay at home with her children. She began exploring issues of child welfare in her articles for Metro magazine, which eventually led to the publication of her book Children: Endangered Species in 1990. This, in turn, was the catalyst for her next venture: the establishment of Great Potentials (originally the Pacific Foundation for Health, Education and Parent Support).
Then, as now, she says her focus has been on researching, observing and learning so she can develop effective and workable solutions.
“I’ve never believed in bewailing without suggesting well-founded ways forward. I guess what drives me is a desire to increase the stock of kindness in the world and to increase opportunities for people to live positive, self-supporting lives as good family members and good citizens.”
Lorna Thornber
www.greatpotentials.org.nz