Saving our history
Cushla Scrivens’ family lived in Feilding and it was her schoolteacher father Noel Amadio who piqued her interest in history.
In the 2020 New Year honours Scrivens has been given the Queen’s Service Medal for her services to historical research and heritage preservation in the Manawatu¯ and Horowhenua.
Scrivens said it was not until she returned to the Manawatu¯ that she again became interested in local history.
An early memory for Scrivens was at Feilding Ag and students were given a booklet about Feilding.
“I walked around to see if everything was still there,” she said of the Manawatu¯ township.
She also had a long career as a teacher, first at the Correspondence School based in Wellington, then as an early childhood educator.
It was now 1990 and Scrivens was invited to teach distance learning at Palmerston North Teachers College, a position she held for 14 years.
It was also at this time that curiosity ignited Scrivens’ researching the history of Manawatu¯ .
She was the foundation editor of the
Manawatu¯ Journal of History from 2004 to 2017.
“The aim was to talk about the wider Manawatu¯ area,” she said of the research journal which covered the Manawatu¯ , included Foxton and up to Rangiwahia.
“It was always a journal where people volunteered.
“It was intended for ordinary reading. I like to encourage people to have their view.”
The other offices she has held were secretary of Historic Places Manawatu¯ Horowhenua since 2008 and then as treasurer from 2010 to 2012.
She organised regular field trips and compiled the society’s quarterly newsletter.
Scrivens mentioned the late Wendy Pettigrew from Whanganui who not only held strong to her personal views, but was a great help with historical matters.
At the regional level she liaised with the planning staff of the three local councils on heritage policy issues.
Scrivens has published a variety of academic articles and educational material, and has developed the Historic Places Manawatu¯ -Horowhenua website and its online record.
She was on the Te Manawa Museum Society committee from 2009-2015 which supports the staff in providing exhibitions with public appeal and a variety of services and activities, and coorganised the national conference of Historic Places Aotearoa in Palmerston North.
Adding to her long list of community involvement, Scrivens was appointed a trustee of the Caccia Birch House Trust in 2018 and is supervising the creation of historical displays at the associated Coach House to enhance visitor experiences.
Professor Jenny Carryer MNZM (2000) has again been honoured in the 2020 New Year honours with a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (CNZM) for services to health, particularly nursing.
And she says she’s not finished yet.
“I really have no idea why I went nursing in the first place but have had no regrets because it is a career that can take many many different forms and allows people to choose where they think they can make the biggest difference.”
Domiciled in Palmerston North, Prof Carryer said she has had a long interest in the long-term conditions of chronic illness and the development and establishment of the nurse practitioner role in New Zealand.
“There are many such conditions but especially we think about diabetes, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases along with mental health problems.
“We understand this more and more as frequently being the result of the social determinants of health and exacerbated by poverty and poor access to primary healthcare.
“It’s much the same across multiple countries and fuels my passion to see the support and ongoing development of high quality primary health care services, that is, the ambulance at the top of the cliff rather than at the bottom.”
She said nurses now worked right across the spectrum of health services, from leading services to community-based primary healthcare to bedside nursing in hospitals.
A central feature of nursing was a focus on people as individuals and supporting people to live as well as possible whatever their circumstances.
“Maximising health and wellbeing,” she emphasised.
“In the last 20 years there has been a rapid expansion in advanced practice roles supported by postgraduate education.
“Nursing still has huge untapped potential to make a real difference to the challenges currently facing the health system.
“There are now more and more nurses practising at a level and range of service we could not have imagined 50 years ago.”
Prof Carryer said her goal is to work towards the health system finally understanding that instead of considering nursing as a cost to be kept pruned, it is seen as the resource which with proper investment holds a key to “transforming what we are able to offer people”.
She is professor of Nursing at Massey University’s School of Nursing and has been executive director of the College of Nurses Aotearoa for 27 years.
In 2010, she became the chairwoman of the National Nursing Organisations Leadership group and was chairwoman of the Health Workforce New Zealand’s Nursing Workforce Advisory Group from 2015 to 2019.
She has been a member of other organisations and groups including the Primary Health Advisory Council to the Ministry of Health, the Expert Nursing Advisory Group on primary health care development, and the Primary Health Organisation Development Taskforce.
She has been a visiting professor and honorary faculty member of Yale University and has held adjunct positions, research positions, visiting scholar positions or consortium membership with the Universities of Maastricht (Netherlands), Alberta (Canada), the University of Technology Sydney, Flinders University and the University of South Australia.