Sam | Motueka, Tasman
“I often get people that talk to me about stuff that’s not going too well in their lives, it’s more of a case of them being able to tell me what they need to do to make that not so bad for them, because I can’t fix it for them.
They’ve got to be able to fix it for themselves. Recently I had a lady telling me that she was quite upset about the fact that her sister had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and that was happening during lockdown, and basically she just felt comfortable that she could talk to me about that.
It was basically because of lockdown, she was feeling tired and unwell, and didn’t really want to go to work anymore, and basically said that she resigned from her job, and the next day went to the doctors, and found out how unwell she actually was. Because it was just the day before lockdown, there was none of that payment coming through that the Government had handed out, so she felt like she was missing out on that as well. So it was basically listening to what’s happening in their life, rather than being able to offer any advice or anything like that.
Most people just like to be able to unload, and part of that unloading is actually having themselves heard, and sometimes you can offer advice, but often, instead of actually offering advice, it’s just being able to listen and say, yeah okay, I’ve heard you, I might be able to understand what you’re going through, but I might not be able to understand what you’re going through, or be able to say, okay if you went and talked to this person they might be able to understand more of what’s happening for you.
I grew up in Canterbury, a little town that had a population of 200, and the town was called Waipara. It was a Government town. So pretty much the entire town belonged to the Government with all Government houses. My father worked for the New Zealand Railways, and my mother was a nurse, but we actually had our own house in that town, which was a bit of a bonus. When we first moved there, we lived in one of the Education Board houses, and then from there, I went and worked on farms, and had leased my own farm, did my own sort of thing. That was going well, and then basically I decided that I wanted to go and do something different. So, I went and worked with disadvantaged youth or youth that were being removed from the education system because of problems that they were having at school, and school didn’t want to look after them anymore. That was one heck of a challenge. I did very, very well at doing that. I enjoyed working with them. Absolutely shattered and exhausted at the end of the day, every single day of the week. I don’t think most people understand how much energy goes into keeping an eye on them, looking after them, getting them into employment – all those sorts of things. The best year I had there, I had 60 young people pass through my books, and 58 of them went into employment, which was absolutely amazing, and they actually managed to stay in employment for more than three months. So, they had a positive outcome in their lives. That was really enjoyable to be able to do that and since then I went and was self-employed for a few years, again just to destress after looking after the young people for four years. Now I work for the Department of Corrections as a Probation Officer here in Motueka. Been here for coming up 13 years.
I had one young lad who came to us because he was hungry, and what had happened is his parents weren’t about anymore. Why, I never actually got that answer, and he was living with his Grandad, and his Grandad had Alzheimer’s and got to the point where he didn’t actually know who the lad was. So the lad wasn’t looking after himself and in the fact of not looking after himself, wasn’t looking after his grandson as well. So his grandson was getting into a wee bit of strife, basically because of the situation, and so he turned up in my office and I sort of took him aside and looked after him for a bit, and found him alternative accommodation where he went and lived with a family that took him in. They fed him and looked after him, and got him connected with the Ministry of Social Development so that he actually had some income coming in. So, he was what they called an unsupported youth at that stage. He was actually getting a benefit only from 16 years of age at that stage. So, if he wouldn’t have opened up and we weren’t able to have a conversation, we never would have found out what was going on for him, to be able to support him to move on and go and do better things. That was like two or three days’ work and we had him up and running and doing stuff. When he left me, he went off to become a welder for a boat-building company, which was a good outcome. I don’t know where he’s at now. I sort of lost track with him after about a year or so. That’s that with these young ones. You lose track of them after a short period of time, and they go and do all sorts of better and greater things.
The joy was the fact that you felt like you’d done something good for the community, you’d done something amazing for them. It wasn’t till three or four years later where I’d run into them in the street and they came up and they gave thanks for what you did for us at that point. It was absolutely incredible. The odd one came back, or you’d get their parents turn up and go, well you made a difference in our son or daughter’s life when you were there. That was the reward for doing that sort of thing.”
