Widening the horizons of young parents

Eight-month-old baby Phoenix gets a kiss from mum Christal Duff-Timoti, age 18, at the School for Young Parents. Picture / Alan Gibson

The distance from the Ford Block to Rotorua's tourist gondola and luge is a fraction over 3km. For students at the city's School for Young Parents, it might as well be on the other side of the world.

The school, based in converted classrooms in the Ford Block's near-deserted Sunset Junior High School, takes in 26 young mothers aged 14 to 19 with childcare next-door for their babies.

Teacher Wendy Robinson says that when the whole school visited the luge recently, it was a new experience.

"These girls had never been on it. All that adrenalin stuff they hadn't had," she says.

When the group went to Taupo, three of them had never been south of Rotorua.

One saw a black and white animal on the side of the road and asked, "What's that?" It was a cow.

When the teachers helped to dig a vegetable garden, a student asked, "Why are you putting it in the dirt?" She didn't know that vegetables grow in the ground.

Somehow, despite all the opportunities of a wealthy globalised society around them, young New Zealanders in some low-income families are growing up with such limited horizons that they can barely imagine a different life from the one they have grown up in.

The School for Young Parents is changing that by deliberately extending their experiences. Christal Duff-Timoti, 18, now aims to go to polytech; her friend Whaea Lemon, also 18, has her sights set on interior design; Donna Waaka, 18, wants to be a primary school teacher.

But the mainstream school system has failed these young parents.

"I didn't like school but I kind of wish I had stayed at school longer," says Donna.

Christal, holding eight-month-old baby Phoenix, says: "You are treated better here - like an adult."

Steve Holmes, a former police youth worker who now runs Rotorua's youth centre Da Bomb Shelter for 13 to 18-year-olds, says many young people are coming through the schools with no direction in their lives.

"In my work I think the three most important factors that young people need, and some don't have, are a sense of value or self-worth, a sense of purpose and a sense of vision," he says.

"Without those things, it's too easy to do nothing, to get stuck in that rut and settle for second-best.

"If they don't value themselves, they won't value other people, so there is the source of a lot of problems.

"There are a lot of visionless people - more than there used to be. Why, I don't know."

In part, he believes, drugs are "a big motivation- killer". Another factor is harder to define.

"The music, the TV - it's all about doing what feels good, looking after number one, live for today, hire-purchase, get the results now," Mr Holmes says.

"People are not required to plan ahead any more. People want results now. So I think young people are built up to not wanting to put work in now to reap results later."

Children who drop out of school often become directionless adults. Charisma Church pastor Rimaha Wiringi sees people in his own extended family who live on benefits, yet spend more than he does on takeaways - then "always seem to run out of money".

An old Fordlands identity says: "We were brought up to work and save for a rainy day. This lot live from day to day - they just want everything."

Local schools report extraordinary transience as families move around to escape from debts or failed relationships.

Western Heights Primary, a decile 2 school which is 87 per cent Maori, lost 31 per cent of its students during 2004 and 23 per cent last year, excluding those moving on to intermediate school at the end of year 6. So far this year it has lost 20 per cent.

"We've had seven families move to Australia this year, and we have people moving back to where they are from - Whangarei or the East Coast," says principal Brent Griffin.

"We have some that come and go quite frequently for better opportunities, or there could be whanau support where they are heading.

"They are mostly solo mums, maybe with a new partner. Dads don't play a huge part in these families."

The School for Young Parents offers some possible pointers. As Christal Duff-Timoti says, a clue may be "treating people like adults".

"We are more flexible," says Ms Robinson, one of the two teachers. "We do our own gardens. We clean the school."

The young mothers do polytech courses in beauty, bartending, waitressing, welding. They do work experience.

They get time in the gym and in art class and learning how to look after their babies. They get trips away.

"It's up to you to do the work," says Whaea Lemon. "You don't have to do the work. You do it on your own. If you want to do maths, you can do maths." And they do.

Here, at least, people are moving on from the Ford Block lifestyle portrayed in Alan Duff's Once Were Warriors, published two years after Whaea was born.

"My parents grew up in that gang, drinking, partying lifestyle where the children were left with older brothers and sisters," she says.

"But it certainly has changed. It's good for them to have done that back in those days, but we can see how it used to be.

"We are wanting something better for our children."