HELEN ROBINSON

Refusing to unsee

There are moments of Helen Robinson’s work that will never leave her. There are what she calls ‘‘stop moments’’ every day that remind her why she’s chosen to work at one of the country’s biggest homeless shelters. The day before we speak, it came late, at the weekly women-only dinner. One of the women arrived having been assaulted half an hour before. Robinson and other staff looked after her until an ambulance came.

‘‘I’m driving home at 8 o’clock thinking, this is what we’re here for. The exquisite vulnerability, as much as the explicit courage, of that woman in that moment – that made me stop.’’

The day before, the moment was the mihi whakatau (welcome speech) for new homelessness peer support workers – people Robinson had stood beside on their own journeys inside from the streets. ‘‘Part of the richness of the [Auckland City] Mission is that you just have moments like this all the time.

‘‘There are stories of extraordinary tragedy and desperation, and stories of incredible resilience and courage and transformation.’’

It’s a wonderful job, she stresses, but ‘‘it’s not a job that’s without pain’’.

Newly appointed to the charity’s top job of Auckland City Missioner, Robinson joined the organisation eight years ago to lead one of its homeless services.

Access to emergency accommodation wasn’t what it is now. Staff could generally rustle up a bed for someone who arrived at their door during the day – but not necessarily at night. ‘‘I’ll never forget the first time that I gave someone a blanket and said, ‘Welcome to Auckland city’,’’ Robinson says.

Providing food and shelter are two of the charity’s central roles. For Robinson, it’s a natural progression from growing up in a house in Wellington that was always open to people who needed a meal or a place to stay.

With five children and a revolving door of visitors, the home was noisy and chaotic, but anchored in her parents’ values, which ‘‘really sought to include people’’.

Robinson was in her mid-teens when she entered the world of social work with Challenge 2000, a youth and social work development agency. She encountered people in state care, in the prison system, on the street.

‘‘I was trained to form good relationships, and taught the basic skills of being a youth worker and a social worker, and just the management of people.

‘‘But probably more importantly, I was trained to view the world from the point of view of the people who aren’t receiving, who aren’t included.’’

She’s used that lens since, gaining education, awareness and experience along the way.

She stayed with Challenge 2000 part-time while she was studying law and social policy at Victoria University of Wellington and took up a full-time role there when she graduated.

Her OE in London was a time for biggerpicture thinking, travelling to Africa while working for a big international aid agency. But ultimately, ‘‘the call of the sea and the call of the land, and the call to come home was very, very strong’’.

She returned to New Zealand and made her home in Auckland, where she led a small youth development organisation, The Logos Project, her first proper chance to cut her teeth on leadership.

After five years there – and then a brief stint of ‘‘living off the will of people around me who cared about me’’ – she landed a job at the City Mission. There’s a sense of inevitability to her path, she says. Not to becoming missioner, but to being ‘‘in this’’.

‘‘From my very early days of being at Challenge, aged 15, 16, there’s a truth that you can’t unsee stuff.’’

Then it becomes about understanding why things are the way they are, and what you can do to change it, she says.

One of the main things Robinson has sought to change in her time at the mission is New Zealand’s approach to food insecurity.

What food insecurity meant in Aotearoa eight years ago was ‘‘radically different’’ to what it is today – both in the level of need and our understanding of it. ‘‘If I used that word eight years ago, you would have looked at me like, ‘What do you mean?’ ’’

The mission has gone from handing out between 10,000 and 12,000 food parcels a year when she started to about 50,000 last year.

Aturning point for Robinson was a Christmas she spent co-ordinating the distribution programme. A phone appointment system was introduced last year, but before that it was common for people to camp out overnight to secure a festive food parcel. ‘‘Being part of those processes deeply, deeply, deeply disturbed me.

‘‘I would walk to work, I lived in the CBD at the time, and it was 7 o’clock in the morning, and the queue for food was literally around the corner.’’

Hundreds of people would queue for hours for a parcel that would feed a family for three or four days – a bag of food that would cost perhaps $60 or $70 at the supermarket.

‘‘Literally after Christmas one day, I was so upset, I went back to my computer and googled food security in New Zealand.’’

A ‘‘really big rabbit hole’’ opened up from there. She realised the problem wasn’t being talked about – at least not in a joined-up way – and so she embarked on a research master’s degree at Auckland University to delve into the issue.

It’s been ‘‘quite a journey’’ since then. In 2019, the City Mission formed the Kore Hiakai Zero Hunger Collective with other social services and the Ministry of Social Development. Robinson credits it with being key to the government releasing $32 million to address food poverty during the pandemic.

There’s more she wants from the Government. Top of the wish list is a boost to benefit levels, but she’s also been asking for years for food poverty to be measured.

The last time that happened across the population was in 2008-09, and more recent research suggests the number of people in food poverty has significantly increased since then.

Robinson doubles down on how unsettling and confronting those statistics are when you see them in the flesh every day.

‘‘There is something about the privilege of being at the mission that is disturbing, and it should disturb you, and it should disturb me. I hope for the rest of my tenure that I remain disturbed.

‘‘The moment I get used to things is the moment I’m done, because I really genuinely believe we should never get used to people not having a home, or not get used to people not having enough food, or get used to people being unwell.’’

That feeling isn’t something she leaves at the door when she goes home for the night, but the pull of her career over her life is more about how it impacts her world view than how it impedes on her leisure time. ‘‘Being part of people’s lives like this throws the light on to your own life. I think the word I’m searching for is, it forces me to be authentic.’’

She prioritises good food, exercise, time with friends and family, enjoyment, learning – ‘‘all the stuff that is good in life’’.

Robinson’s first year as missioner is a big one. HomeGround, the charity’s new Hobson Street premises, is due to open at the end of the year. The medical centre, two floors of detox services, foodbank and pharmacy will all shift there, running alongside 80 new permanent homes for chronically homeless people.

There will also be a ‘‘sacred space’’ where the dead can lie, something the charity is often called on to help with when homeless wha¯ nau die.

In the foyer of the mission’s current home on Union St, an intricate model shows the building progress, the walls plastered with artists’ mock-ups.

Union St was only ever a temporary stopgap while Hobson St was redeveloped. Now, ‘‘it’s time to go home’’, Robinson says.

As she guides us through the patchwork of kitchen, corridors and storage rooms, banana boxes stacked high on shelves and a trolley of food donations parked up against a wall, the need for more is clear.

Robinson is effusively grateful for the donations that have made the project possible – from the little boy who came in to drop off his $7 in pocket money to the strangers who hand over cheques for $10,000.

‘‘We genuinely feel the support of Auckland. And that actually means a lot, it means that we can do what we do. But actually psychologically, it means that we know that people are with us.

‘‘One of the wonderful things, I think, about being part of the mission is you just get such a deep sense of being connected and held by Auckland.’’

‘‘We should never get used to people not having a home ... not having enough food, or get used to people being unwell.’’