Peoples Centre celebrates ten years of help for poor and sick

By CARROLL DU CHATEAU

It is easy to drift past the Peoples Centre in Wyndham St in Auckland City. Sandwiched between St Patricks Cathedral and the Shakespeare Hotel, this small slice of socialism with its peeling paint and sandwich board offering "doctors, dentists, nurses" doesn't rate a second glance from the suits striding towards Queen St.

Inside the foyer, adorned with orange vinyl chairs and offering a "koha room" where members drop off unwanted clothes and pick up other people's cast-offs, the centre is even more out of step with the heart of the CBD. As are the haircut prices. Here, just 200m away from Servilles in Albert St, cuts cost $3 for an adult, $1 for children.

Upstairs in the medical centre - again only a couple of blocks from the slick new CityMed centre next to the Stamford Plaza - doctor visits are free to members with community service cards and a porcelain crown costs an unbelievable $550. And, says activist-turned-MP and founder of the Peoples Centre, Sue Bradford, "we've always worked to the highest hygiene standards."

Certainly as soon as you hit the second floor, the antiseptic smells of childhood trips to the dentists bring the memories flooding back.

The latest Peoples Centre dentist practice to open, in Mangere, cost $60,000 to set up and staff are paid the going rate. And no, clients (including mental health patients, who are treated free of charge), do not walk out with nasty black fillings.

The whole idea, says Bradford, is to give disadvantaged people the same chances as the rest of the population - and in this day and age that means pearly white porcelain fillings.

The Peoples Centre was born of a need to help people thrown into poverty by the user-pays policies and benefit cuts of the late 1980s and early 90s.

Sue Bradford, her husband Bill and a small team from the Unemployed Workers Rights Centre, were appalled at the hardship people were enduring. They targeted mothers who avoided the doctor "or worse still, weren't taking their kids," teenagers with rotten teeth and beneficiaries struggling to work their way through a maze of entitlements and benefit add-ons that still did not provide a decent standard of living.

"The key thing about the Peoples Centre is that we didn't get the idea from anywhere else in the world," says Bradford from a windowless Green Party office in central Auckland.

The idea was to provide under one roof a programme of integrated benefit services which the city's poor "and anyone else for that matter can use as often as they like - and with a sense of pride."

After 15 years working at the sharp and uncomfortable end of hardship and poverty - barricading herself in Treasury offices, chaining herself to railings - and a year in the Beehive as a Green list MP, Bradford still lights up the dingy rooms she tends to inhabit with her own personal energy. Her broad New Zealand speech is liberally sprinkled with Maori words, her clothes plain to the point of hillbilly, her trademark blond hair as though it has just fought its way through a mighty Wellington southerly - as it probably has.

Some things could strike you as false about Bradford. Despite the continuous references to Maori she is pure Pakeha. ("But anyone who's worked with poverty has to know their way round a marae.") She wasn't born poor. Her father, Professor Dick Matthews, was a cell biologist at the University of Auckland, her American-born mother Lois, a teacher.

What is predictable is that her mother was a vigorous civil rights supporter, both parents marched against the Vietnam War and apartheid and Bradford herself was at the University of Auckland during the Vietnam and Springbok protest years.

The mix produced a tireless fighter for the underdog, which in Bradford's case translated into commonsense, practical help.

For a four-weekly flat fee - $5 when the first Peoples Centre opened 10 years ago, $10 a family now - members are guaranteed access to a GP, practice nurse, dentist, welfare advocates, budget advice, counsellors and, of course, haircuts. Again it boils down to practical help. "A haircut is a great uplift. If you're not feeling good about yourself, it's difficult to get out to that job interview."

A key part of Peoples Centre philosophy was that anyone could join, no questions asked. Members are not means-tested or asked to fill in forms such as those required by Work and Income New Zealand. "Our kaupapa or vision was that we should supply services of the highest quality - the same as the most sophisticated private practice on the North Shore," says Bradford. " We hate income-testing and the whole targeting thing. We also know families where both husband and wife are working and they still can't pay their bills."

Bradford's formula caught on and they opened more Peoples Centres where the need seemed greatest. First the Manurewa centre in 1993, then Mangere five years later. In the meantime the city centre moved to its roomy offices in Wyndham St. Says Bradford: "Where there were opportunities we seized them. Sure, some ventures failed, mainly because we never had enough staff or enough money, but basically we kept tailoring the centres to meet the needs out there."

Not every idea worked. The "green dollar" exchange, by which members could buy and sell each other's goods and services without going through the system, is described by Bradford as "a bit of a disaster, to be blunt."

Why? "We tended to get lots of astrologers and massage therapists bartering their services when what most members needed was panelbeating and plumbing."

Then there was a proposed low-cost law service which failed to qualify for community legal funding. "We had plenty of people who needed the service. The fundamental problem was that we hadn't secured the funding lines before employing the staff," says Bradford. "Then, even after going through all of the processes, we couldn't get through all the red tape and qualify as a community law service."

Typically, Bradford and a relentlessly determined team of around 10 learned from their mistakes, then passed that knowledge on. Today, after the medical and dental service, the Peoples Centre's biggest drawcard is in welfare advocacy, helping members to get the benefits to which they are entitled.

While Bradford now sits in the House, chipping away at poverty issues from the inside (she was voted a parliamentary "Star Performer Award" by Metro magazine), her centre successor, Alastair Russell, a senior social mental health worker at Cornwall House who protested alongside her from the beginning, has taken up the challenge.

Russell is adamant. Despite the Labour Government's posturing, there is still reluctance from the Department of Work and Income to tell people what benefits they qualify for. "Basically what happens is someone will call and say, 'Social Welfare's mucking me round. Can you help sort it out?' ... They avoid putting people into the 'exceptional circumstances' category necessary for them to qualify for a special benefit," he says.

"Simply being in poverty does not equal exceptional circumstances. Staff will not put the words 'special' and 'benefit' into the same sentence [for fear of causing a deluge of applications]. So we're about to run a campaign outside Social Welfare offices highlighting how people can apply for a special benefit."

The Peoples Centre also works with organisations ranging from the Tenants Protection Association, Rent Reviews Committee right through to the Social Security Appeal Authority to sort out individual problems. Such things are tough and often too complicated for ordinary, busy people, let alone young parents or the mentally ill.

Another major new push is a three-way project between the centre, Auckland Healthcare (in the shape of Community Mental Health Services) and Mind and Body Consultants (a mental health consumer group) - so providing a one-stop shop for mental health patients.

As Russell points out, this slice of the community is already a big part of the Peoples Centre membership. They want to be treated the same as everyone else but need expert help to guide them through a labyrinth of benefit and medical services that add up to a decent and safe standard of living. Says Russell: "We want people to be able to access our services in a planned manner which entails appropriate funding, staffing and organisation. We hope to have the pilot going by the middle of next year."

Then there are the smaller, practical moves for which the Peoples Centre is famous. By next winter a campaign to insulate South Auckland houses - with the aim of cutting the rates of flu, tuberculosis and meningitis - will be under way. Russell is also planning another push at providing a legal service for low-income clients. "The District Court is just around the corner. It makes eminent sense to run a legal service out of here. I've actually rung a community-based legal service [for advice] from this very building."

Ten years from the day they nailed up the sign in Customs St, it is clear that the Peoples Centre formula works. On a Friday afternoon at the city branch, all three doctors and dentists are fully booked. Membership stands at around 4000 families, roughly 14,000 individuals served by 60 staff and helpers. Last year turnover topped $1 million over the three centres.

But despite the 1999 Labour Government - and MP Sue Bradford beavering in the Beehive - there is still a crushing need for practical help for society's most vulnerable.

And, as always, the future is far from certain. Says Russell: "The Government talks about addressing needs, yet our future is no more secure than it was in 1990. How do we keep going? By snuffling around anywhere we sense there's money ... "

"We're doing different things now," he continues. "Ten years ago we were being arrested outside Social Welfare offices. Now I'm a senior social worker and Sue's in Parliament, meaning the core of the group is working from the inside.

"However, we still retain the same ethics, beliefs and values - and we're still determined to keep up a fundamental, practical service to improve the lives and chances of people who need help most."