Waltham Community Cottage Evaluation

The primary task of this evaluation was to learn about the impact of the services and programmes offered by the Waltham Community Cottage
Te Whare Roopu o Oterepo (the Cottage) in and on the local community, and to consider how these might be improved by identifying more closely community needs and barriers to participation.  The evidence suggests that the Cottage is:

A PLACE TO EXPERIENCE COMMUNITY AND A SENSE OF BELONGING
The Cottage has built trust in the community.  Everyone is valued and there exists a deeper understanding and acceptance of vulnerability, a feeling of safety, and opportunity for widened social connections.

A PLACE FOR CONNECTION 
It is experienced as a place of warmth, good energy and aroha.  Through the Golden Oldies, the Play Group and activities like the community lunch bridges of understanding are being built, between neighbours, and cross culturally. The Cottage is providing information to connect people to their community, and building relationships that anchor and enrich lives and overcome loneliness and isolation.

Te Reo Rangatira has built deeper connection for participants to their spirituality and identity through the genealogy work and is bringing deeper valuing and appreciation of Maori cultural heritage.

A PLACE NURTURING ACCEPTANCE AND WELLBEING 
Through a range of courses participants have been encouraged look beyond illness to wellness – building hope, understanding and new perspectives.  The impact is evidenced in people changing life habits, building self-belief, stamina and resilience.

A PLACE FOR GIVING AND FINDING MEANING
Through volunteering there have been all sorts of opportunities over the years from gardening to running groups.  These opportunities have been extended through the WINZ ‘activity in the community’ programme and Cottage initiatives, nurturing responsibility and self-belief.  Satisfaction and personal growth have been the fruits of serving and being involved in the development of others.

A PLACE OF OPPORTUNITY AND SELF-DISCOVERY PROVIDING A PATHWAY TO PERSONAL AND VOCATIONAL FULFILLMENT
Participants have found motivation, clarity, confidence, self-belief and a sense of achievement.  The environment of the Cottage, the range of learning opportunities, the experience of personal support, valuing and encouragement, the problem solving and practical help, the guidance and coaching, healing and enabling have all had a significant impact. 
 

What’s makes this work so successful?  The evaluation sought to identify the strengths and challenges of the Cottage, and the nature of the internal roles and relationships, together with a brief health check on organisational processes.

Feedback suggested the Cottage has a big heart for the community!  This starts with the staff team who are seen as committed, passionate and people focused, working in complementary ways, with strong skills.  They are seen as high energy, full of ideas, enthusiastic and bringing a sense of fun.  Their commitment to people and their highest good, framed by a strengths based approach were further strengths, alongside their openness and commitment to ongoing learning.

The Board were seen as equally enthusiastic, stable, enabling, in tune, supportive and committed to local area and Cottage's vision.  Feedback and observation suggest there are healthy workplace relationships and processes between staff, the board, tutors and volunteers.

The special atmosphere and welcome people feel through the volunteers was particularly noted.  Programming was seen as innovative, creative, relevant and community driven! This was underpinned by an approach which was considered flexible and responsive.  Peer organisations recognised this work as real community development – developing people, creating pathways for their development, and networks within the community to strengthen the social fabric with an emphasis on inclusivity, drawing closer together the diversity of members with special attention to those most vulnerable.  There was respect, recognition and admiration from other local service providers and much ‘good will’ for collaborative work.

However, the community is changing.  There is less unemployment than 10 years ago, there are more people working longer hours.  The proportions of Pacific Islanders, Maori and Asians continue to grow.  Waltham remains overrepresented, compared to Christchurch, in relation to the proportion of people on benefits including DPB.  More of the population of Waltham are in their young to middle adulthood years and there are less younger children or older people compared to Christchurch.   There are more single person households and more childless families. 

While the Cottage does not keep statistics on ethnicity of users, on a daily basis, the staff and board have noted such trends.  They are being reflected in its users, and thought the challenge to reach particular under represented groups, for example, Samoans.  Staff observe that the cottage has become more multi-cultural and more tolerant of all peoples and that there is more Maori spoken.  Initiatives like fostering a focus on Asian women on Thursday mornings through a female Chinese Mandarin speaking volunteer are creating space for difference. 
 

Increasing mental health issues in the community continue to challenge the services, and skills and training have been sought to further equip staff to respond with sensitive support when visitors or regular users become unwell.  Funders need to recognise and appreciate the significance of the Cottage's contribution in this area.  The Cottage's mentoring and placement work with organisations such as Comcare and CPIT Workskills placing people with intellectually disabilities are much valued by these services and their clients.  The Cottage is a safe, accepting and transformational place for these people!  This work takes real commitment, balancing and energy, and is done well! 

My observation of the staff’s approach is that, while they exhibit great flexibility and adaptability in programming, they are also aware that they cannot meet every need.  Within their mission and vision, they regularly initiate ways to assess community needs, their programmes reach to those that are vulnerable and isolated, and build on the contacts that they have in a way that encourages and incorporates people into an ever closer involvement and pathway of/to self-development through their holistic programming approach. 

This organisation and those who support it should be very proud of its achievements.  The Cottage has a long, solid and successful history.  It has been a place of consistency.  It has been a place of hope and healing.  It has been a place of personal transformation.  It has been flexible and responsive to needs and issues in the community.  Lives have been touched and changed.  The fabric of the community has been strengthened and drawn closer together as a result of the effective community development work undertaken. 

In the fickleness of relationships and the vastness and diversity of needs the work is done with the utmost respect and dignity for all concerned, striving for innovative solutions and strategies along the way.  The Cottage creates safe spaces and opportunities within the resources they have to manage.  People find encouragement, positivism, energy and acceptance.

Part of their success is written in the stories of those who have left, and gone into the paid workforce.  The challenges ahead relate to a desire by the staff to reach still deeper into the community.  Hence the attention in the evaluation on more closely understanding the needs of community members, identifying the barriers to participation, and seeking ideas on promotion and publicity strategies to connect to those most vulnerable.

This report highlights the nature and impact of the community development model, based on a strengths based approach: patient, thorough and relational.  The impact stories are inspirational.  They provide strong reason to have high trust in the integrity and professionalism of the work.  Funders are challenged to 

Three key interrelated challenges have emerged from the review.  They challenge the board, the staff and Funders in furthering the future progress of this transforming work.

CHALLENGE 1:  Excellent staff with proven skills constrained in extending their reach and building deeper links into the community through funding pressures and administration required to sustain operations. 

CHALLENGE 2:  A venue with secure tenancy but with challenges of size, warmth and workable spaces, not recognisable for all it has to offer as a community facility and not ideally located.

CHALLENGE 3:  Extending reach and client numbers within a changing demographic and ethnic mix in the population, and within the daily vulnerabilities of participants and referred supported need clients.

The board has a sound basis of roles and relationships on which it is encouraged to pursue its own further growth and development, as it seeks to address these challenges.  There are important and exciting years ahead. 

Alan Johnson, Senior Policy Analyst with the Salvation Army Social Policy and Parliamentary Unit recently addressing a forum on poverty in Christchurch noted with concern the increasing social divide in Aotearoa / NZ between the rich and the poor¹ .  He illustrated the embedding of poverty and increasingly racially based nature of poverty and ill health² .  He articulated the challenges for those working with poor and marginalised communities he called ‘communities of fate’, (which he contrasted with rich ‘communities of choice’).  He issued the challenge of how to transform these communities of fate into communities of hope.  The Cottage stories provide evidence that, with the investment of Funders, the energy of staff, the commitment of volunteer board members, welcomers and tutors, the Cottage is playing an important role in transforming Waltham into a community of hope. 

What a taonga indeed this place is in this community.  As one past participant commented:

¹ The richest 10% now have 51.8% of the wealth and the poorest 50% have 5.2% of the wealth. From a presentation on 17th October 2007 – Sponsored by Healthy Christchurch and CCOSS.
²  Related to the growth in poverty statistics of Maori and Pacific Island populations, together with their growth in statistics on invalid and sickness benefits.