Forty years as a social worker – a time of huge change

A woman in her mid-20s was thrown in the deep end. She is still working with children and their families, drawing on the wisdom of her decades in a job that has evolved with the times. Rachel Moore reports.

In 1980, at 26, Eve Fonewas thrown into social work head first. Forty years later, she is still working with children and their families. After nearly 12 years as the site manager at Oranga Tamariki in Levin, Fone is backwhere she started as a social worker, dealingwith court reports and family disputes.

She remembers visiting the Kohitere Boys’ Training Centre in Levin, which operated in the 1970s for troubled boys and men, and being shocked.

‘‘I sent kids there. It was whatwe did.

‘‘The way we dealt with them there escalated the issues, so we would just move them to another institution.’’

She says the state eventually learnt and the institution was closed in 1990.

‘‘It is an evolution process after learning from the stories built up of knowledge that institutions do not work. If you shut them up, theywould only try harder to get out,’’ she says of the people sent there.

‘‘If you have a loving family, you do not need the gangs. That is what the gangs are to those boys.’’

Fone says that when she started at the Oranga Tamariki predecessor, its staff knew nothing about Ma¯ori people and culture.

‘‘Whenwe uplifted Ma¯ori children, theywould go to Pa¯keha¯ families and sometimes forever.

‘‘They lost all of their cultural identity and sense of self.’’

She says the organisation has come on a ‘‘journey of knowledge’’ and is focusing on staff having a good a large area. ‘‘I was driving in the dark to see people all alone. Looking back, I am horrified.’’

She says there is noway she would have stuck around if she was not passionate about the job, and seeing the differences in children’s and families’ lives every day.

She says it is not uncommon for parents at the end of their tether to bring their children in and drop them off in the reception area.

Once, she and a colleague broke a window to rescue a baby who had been left alone for two or three hours in a hot house in Christchurch.

‘‘When that baby stopped crying, we broke in. The parents did not turn up till the next day.’’

Fone has since worked in the national office in Wellington and then moved to Levin in 2008 as a site manager, completing her masters degree of socialwork.

‘‘I liked being amongst it all and doing the work and having some real influence, some real ability to change what people are doing.’’

She says Levin has ‘‘appalling’’ family violence statistics. It has a specialised social worker dedicated to dealingwith it. They meetwith the police and community organisations daily.

She says there is a focus on supporting parents and helping them to understand the corrosive effect witnessing abuse has on a child.

‘‘We try to support the family and themum. Butwitnessing that is abuse.

‘‘We have some amazing outcomes for our kids at times, other times it is harder to see. We can work with tamariki and theirwha¯nau but we cannot solve the world’s problems..’’

Fone says shewould not have lasted 40 years if she took the stress of the job home.

‘‘When I left school, there were only about three jobswomen could do. There are 350 now but I would still do socialwork.’’