Dream to help close to coming true

DETERMINED: Chantelle cried tears of joy when she heard her trust's application to run a youth home had been approved. PHOTO/STEPHEN PARKER 300714SP3

She's gone from disgraced teen mum to award-winning social worker to last week becoming one of a handful of individuals nationwide approved to set up and run a home for young offenders and kids in need. Reporter Katie Holland talked to Rotorua's Chantelle Walker about turning her dream into a reality.

Last week Chantelle Walker sat crying in her car for 15 minutes.

When she tried to drive away, she hyperventilated.

Six months after giving up her job and lodging the application, the 32-year-old had just received confirmation from the Ministry of Social Development that the trust she'd set up had been conditionally approved as a Child and Family Support Service. It could go ahead and open a home for youth offenders.

STAR: Chantelle (left) and administrations officer Jenn Nairn received Child, Youth and Family Shining Star awards in 2012. PHOTO/STEPHEN PARKER A_260912SP6

The joy and relief was massive, hence the tears.

"Putting myself out there was scary," she says.

"It was me. It was my life experience. It was my knowledge. It was my passion. It was my everything."

Letters now arrive addressed to Chantelle as general manager of Te Toa Matataki Trust.

But it could all have been so different.

Better future

Chantelle was just 14 when she fell pregnant. She was, she says, "a huge disgrace" to her family.

"I said I wasn't going to be on the DPB [Domestic Purposes Benefit]. I made it my mission never to go on a benny [benefit]."

She stuck to that, taking whatever jobs she could to make ends meet.

While working as a PA she saw an ad in a newspaper for probation officers and liked the sound of the salary. So she started looking into social work degrees at Waiariki Institute of Technology.

"Originally it was for money and a better future," she admits.

During her second year of study she was on placement with Child Youth and Family's youth justice section.

"I saw then just how big a gap there was for young offenders. The struggles they had to find placements for their kids. It started there.

"I said, 'I am going to do this home. Your kids can come and live at my home'." From there on, opening a home was her sole focus.

"For the whole three years [of study] I concentrated purely on youth issues. I read the legislation around care, I was researching it back then ... I have been working on it for years quietly in the background," she says.

"People don't get that it's such a big gap. For first time or minimal offending, often they [youth] can't be bailed home because they have offended with their parents or against their parents. So they go to high-end residential facilities.

"Why are they being punished for their family's dysfunction? The majority need care."

Commitment

After graduating in 2010 Chantelle, by then a mum of three, was employed as a youth justice social worker at Child Youth and Family.

Her experiences there strengthened her commitment to set up a home.

"I had been clear with everybody all the way through my little career that that is what I want to do.

"My supervisor was really supportive. She made it part of my professional development plan so I could keep working on it."

Last December she resigned to focus on her application, which she lodged in January.

Unsurprisingly, there were extensive policies, paperwork and procedures to produce.

Most similar homes are run by large national organisations whereas for Chantelle, it was all her. But it wasn't the paper or policies that were the hard bit, she says.

"It was the time, the waiting."

She had made no secret of her plans, even presenting Child Youth and Family colleagues with a framed logo of her programme the day she resigned.

But that meant people kept asking what was happening.

Colleagues who'd expressed an interest in working for her were waiting, as was she.

"I had given myself until July 1 and that was it. I was going to go back and get a normal job," she says.

"I was too scared to set up my board of trustees. I didn't know if I was going to be approved."

Motivation

There were doubters along the way - "I have heard, 'Oh just another Maori service'." But they only served to motivate her.

APPROVED: Chantelle explains her vision. PHOTO/STEPHEN PARKER 300714SP3

She'd been looking at suitable properties but couldn't take the plunge and buy one until she knew whether she'd been approved.

"It's been part of my life plan, so I don't have a mortgage of my own, purely so I could do this."

Now she's got the piece of paper it's full steam ahead. Social workers have been hired and she's on the lookout for caregivers and, the main priority, a house.

Te Toa Matataki will house up to five young people of the same sex - boys to start with - aged 12 to 17.

It's envisaged they will stay three to six months. It's open to any young people needing care, however Chantelle's passion is youth offenders.

"What they miss is knowing who they are and what they are as people.

"They have no social skills at all. We need to build them up enough so they are confident and capable of moving out into the big bad world on their own."

She says preventing re-offending starts with the home environment.

"They don't have structure, routine and boundaries at home. That's what we're aiming to do.

"Rules and boundaries, food in the cupboard, clean clothes. It's the basics we all take for granted that are so huge for these kids," she says.

"I am not naive enough to think I am going to save everyone. They could run away, they could re-offend, but I am prepared for it."

The programme's main aim is transitioning young people to independence, teaching them to shop and cook and pay bills, basic skills most kids learn from their parents.

Life skills

Chantelle also plans to draw on other life skills she was taught as a child.

"Food gathering, using resources, that comes from my grandparents. You hunt and fish and prepare it all. That's what the afternoons and the weekends will be."

She credits her parents and paternal grandparents for their amazing support, even when they didn't always understand what she was trying to do.

From her paternal side she is Ngati Whakaue and Rangiwewehi - "Te Arawa through and through" while her mum is a mix of Tahitian, Rarotongan and European.

"I'm a real blended mix of cultures. That comes through in my programme, knowing who we come from and respecting that and learning from that. I'm proud of my Maori heritage and my Island side but I identify first as Maori.

"The person I am is from two different lives. Mum was a single mum, I had to be good at everything, she was strong on that. My [paternal] grandparents were the opposite. I was their little baby. When I got pregnant I felt for my grandparents. They were the people I was worried about."

Single since her relationship with her children's dad ended two years ago, Chantelle says her 17-year-old Jahnte has been there every step of the way.

"My eldest daughter has been my greatest support. She's awesome."

Already in demand

The trust has been given 12 months by the ministry to find a venue and get started, but Chantelle says her programme will be operating as soon as she finds a property, hopefully within two months.

And it won't be a moment too soon - she's already been called with placements.

She is keen to hear from anyone with a suitable property for sale, she's looking for five bedrooms, ideally a workshop, preferably in a rural area on the outskirts of town with land to plant gardens and be self-reliant.

"I have this vision of it all being on one site. I have been looking at lifestyle blocks.

Somewhere out of town, not in a residential area.

'The whole concept is not a home in the suburbs, but somewhere we can transition them into independent living."

Recalling that day last week in the Te Ngae carpark, "just crying and texting people saying I have finally got it", she laughs her home's launch is going to be emotional, for herself and her proud family.

Then it will be down to work and making a difference to the lives of Rotorua's troubled kids. She can't wait to meet them.

"They're all tough when they turn up, but I love the sparkle in their eye when you 'get them'."