The Projects

Update on Healthy Christchurch Projects – July 2005

The following projects have now been developing since November 2002. Each project group is drawn from a range of organisations, some working together for the first time. The Healthy Christchurch Initiative uses projects both to achieve specific goals in health related areas and to foster good collaborations between agencies in the city. Any signatory group can start a new Healthy Christchurch project according to these criteria and pre-existing projects may adopt the Healthy Christchurch label if they feel this would be useful.

New projects can be proposed through the Healthy Christchurch newsletter/contact list. In the event of any signatory groups raising concerns about a proposed project, these concerns will be fully aired before the project is accepted as part of Healthy Christchurch. Projects around which there is no general consensus will not be labelled as part of Healthy Christchurch although this in no way interferes with the right of the project to go ahead independently.

Healthy Christchurch projects are those, which are

• Open to all charter signatories
• Collaborative ventures between at least two charter signatory groups
• Have positive health impacts
• Welcome to carry the Healthy Christchurch logo or claim the support of the network
• Open and transparent to charter signatory groups
• Consistent with the charter

Healthy Workplaces

This project has developed a pilot programme for addressing workplace health issues, including stress, nutrition, relationships and employment law. Those participating include:

• Mental Health Foundation
• Relationship Services
• Council of Social Services
• City Care Limited
• Human Rights Commission
• Occupational Safety and Health
• Simon Mortlock Partners
• Community Law Canterbury
• Volunteering Canterbury
• Heart Foundation

With pilot programmes running at:

• Shirley Primary School
• Community House
• Waipuna Youth and Community Trust
• City Care Ltd

A programme of six sessions has been developed. The first session assesses the particular health issues of that workplace through discussion and individual questionnaires. The next four sessions are then tailored to provide information on any or all of the following issues – mental health at work, relationships at work, smoking, nutrition and physical activity; workplace legal issues. The final seminar will focus on how the organisation wants to continue addressing these issues, since the whole programme will stress the need for ongoing health promotion strategies within the workplace.

This project does not seek to replace any existing workplace health initiatives i.e. Working Well (MHF), Heartbeat Challenge (NHF). Rather, it seeks to introduce workplaces to a range of concepts and issues around workplace health and encourage them to develop a plan for addressing these issues in the long term.

A large number of agencies volunteered to take part in the pilot, indicating that there is a need for such a programme in the city. The pilot programmes are underway and are due to be completed by September 2003. Early responses indicate that the pilot programme is working effectively but a full evaluation will be completed by November 2003. It is then hoped that the programme, suitably amended, will be made available to a wider range of agencies.

Healthy Homes Project

The original project aimed to promote awareness of environmental issues and their potential financial and health impacts among the Christchurch population. The project team consists of representatives from:

• Sustainable Christchurch (CCC)
• The Environment Centre
• Community Law Centre
• Environment Canterbury
• Christchurch Supergrans
• Aranui Community Renewal project
• Healthy Christchurch

It was agreed to run a version of an existing course – the Sustainable Households course- which has been developed and piloted nationally through Ministry of the Environment funding. The course would be aimed at workers whose particular client groups might have low incomes and specific housing needs, with the hope that the workers would adapt the course material to make it more accessible to their clients.

The course ran over 8 weeks, with representatives from a variety of groups including Refugee Resettlement Support, Hepatitis C Support Te Wai Pounamu, Rata Counselling, Christchurch Supergrans and Waipuna Youth and Community Trust. Sessions focused on energy, transport, waste, gardening, water and shopping.

The evaluation of this course is not yet completed but it was clear that people found the information useful. However, the relatively large time commitment (12.5 hours over 8 weeks) proved an obstacle to many potential participants and indicates that running shorter, one-off sessions might reach a wider audience. However, this undermines the influence of group membership on behaviour change, which has proved useful in other pilot courses.

Once the full evaluation is completed, the project team will decide whether to seek funding for courses with other workers and what shape these courses should take.

Oral Health Project

This project was proposed to address the adverse oral health impacts of the decision not to fluoridate the Christchurch water supply. Studies indicate that Christchurch children’s teeth are generally 30% less healthy than their contemporaries in Auckland and Wellington who have fluoridated water supplies. The project team includes representatives of:

• School and Community Dental Services
• Community and Public Health
• Christchurch City Council
• Christchurch School of Medicine
• Canterbury District Health Board Planning and Funding team
• Healthy Christchurch

It was originally proposed to set up a pilot programmes in local kindergartens, providing children with fluoridated milk. Similar schemes have proved highly successful in Chile, Russia and the UK. However, adding fluoride to milk or individual portions of water is not permitted under existing food regulations in New Zealand and Australia and initial investigations by the project team indicate that there is little political will to change these regulations. The team is therefore going back to the drawing board to explore possible oral health promotion schemes which would benefit Christchurch children

One successful short-term achievement of the group was to ensure that in December 2002 every Christmas food parcel distributed through the Methodist Mission contained a toothbrush and fluoridated toothpaste for each child – this reached around 800 children across the city.

City Harvest

City Harvest is a citywide celebration of growing your own food and eating healthily.
The project team has representatives from:

• Soil and Health Canterbury/Waitaha Branch
• Community Gardens Association
• Sustainable Christchurch (CCC)
• Healthy Christchurch

The project is in the early stages of engaging community groups, play centres, kindys, neighbourhood support groups, school, community gardens or service groups to participate in a wide range of City Harvest activities, all linked to the central themes of good nutrition, gardening/ harvesting and celebration. Since every culture has its own harvesting rituals and celebrations, particular efforts will be made to reach the various ethnic groups within Christchurch to showcase their harvest foods, dances and songs. There will be opportunity for groups to fundraise by selling homemade treats, maybe jams and jellies or pickles or the vegetables from the community gardens… it’s up to each group or community to decide how they will use the City Harvest to celebrate their own achievements. The festival will coincide with the harvest moon in March 2004 and a week of events will culminate in a day of festivities, including a fire festival in the central city.

Māori Employment Collaboration Project

What started out as an idea from one of the first Healthy Christchurch workshops in 2001 has grown into a fully functional group under the umbrella of Healthy Christchurch. Originally, there were two strains to this group - Māori into Employment, and Employment Opportunities for Young Māori and Adolescents who arrive through the Refugee System. At the first meeting it was decided that the group would, for now, focus on just the Māori into Employment strain due to the nature of people’s work and not wanting to cast too wide a net. The name then changed to the Māori into Employment Project and again recently changed to the Māori Employment Collaboration because we are a group of people, representing a range of different organisations, who are keen to work together to make a difference in the factors that contribute to Māori employment. This means that we realise that Māori into Employment covers such a wide variety of areas that we wouldn’t want to limit what we can do to just a one off project.

The Māori Employment Collaboration currently includes representatives from:

• Actionworks, Canterbury Development Corporation
• Christchurch Polytechnic
• Creative Works
• Hauora Matauraka
• He Oranga Pounamu
• Mayors Taskforce for Jobs
• Ministry of Social Development
• Te Whanau Puawai Ora
• Tertiary Education Commission
• Trojan Workforce
• Healthy Christchurch

Our aim is “to foster initiatives which help Māori find employment, by collaboration and co-ordination to identify gaps in delivery and to promote ideas and new initiatives that may fill these gaps”

We have had regular meetings since November 2002 and are in the process of putting together a proposal for research to be done on service providers, Whanau and other possible stake holders to hopefully give us an overview of what has and hasn’t been successful and what is currently happening in Christchurch in regards to employment for Māori . We hope the information will be a guide for our group so we can see where our efforts would be most effective, whether that be creating new structures or simply nurturing existing initiatives. The research will be done in three stages; First identifying all employment service providers, employment focussed agencies and Māori whanau and individuals that have been long term unemployed, in the process of gaining employment and those who were unemployed but are now employed. The next stage is to undertake interviews with those identified in stage one. The third stage is to complete a report of the findings. We hope that information from the Community Mapping project will be able to feed into the research and vice versa if it is appropriate.

Sustainable Livelihoods

The Sustainable Livelihoods project was formed out of two projects proposed at the initial Healthy Christchurch workshops – a proposal to research the future of work and how that will impact of the city and a proposal to calculate what constitutes a ‘living wage” for Christchurch and encourage companies to pay their employees accordingly. Early discussions identified that the two issues are highly related and part of a common issue about how to ensure that every person is able to achieve a sustainable livelihood, whether they are in paid employment or contributing to society in other ways. It was recognised that achieving sustainable livelihoods required a thorough understanding of the underlying issues around work and employment and a recognition that isolated interventions which ignored the wider picture could do more harm than good.

The Sustainable Livelihoods project team is made up of representatives from the following Healthy Christchurch Charter signatories:

• Canterbury Development Corporation
• Christchurch City Council
• City Care Ltd
• Healthy Christchurch
• Linwood Resource Centre
• Mayors Taskforce for Jobs
• Richmond Fellowship
• Small Business Enterprise Centre
• Te Whare Roimata
• Volunteering Canterbury
• Work and Income

The group has researched existing literature about a number of related issues – employment patterns, overwork, hidden/undervalued work. They are currently finalising a brief report covering this research and including some key points for wider discussion. This report will be widely circulated in June and a forum on Sustainable Livelihoods will be held in early July, with keynote speakers and hopefully a wide range of participants. The aim is to stimulate public debate on the issues and come up with a range of practical responses.

Read the Project Report (11 August 2003)

Guidelines for Groups working in schools

Assuring the quality of programmes offered to schools is at the heart of a new Healthy Christchurch initiative. Schools can be inundated with offers from agencies wanting to work on site, from running a one-off health education session to offering long term programmes for particular groups of students. It can be hard for principals to know which programmes to choose and whether they can rely on the quality of the service.

A group of Healthy Christchurch charter signatories have been working to address this by designing a simple set of guidelines which can form the basis of the contract between an agency and a particular school. The guidelines cover the issues which need to be considered by both parties, from clarifying roles and responsibilities to issues of finance or liability. They are drafted to cover a wide range of programmes and agencies.

This project has been a collaborative effort between representatives of the following agencies:

• Allergy NZ
• Aranui Primary School
• Cancer Society
• Canterbury Youth Workers Collective
• Childwise - Methodist Mission
• Community and Public Health
• Crossover Trust
• Epilepsy Association
• Hauora Matauraka
• Heart Foundation
• Ministry of Education
• Public Health Nurses
• Te Whanau Puawai Ora
• Waipuna Youth and Community Trust

It highlights the huge commitment people from diverse agencies have to providing high quality services to Christchurch schools. The project team believe that this is best done by being aware of the many pressures which exist in the school environment, by commitment to excellent service, communication and accountability and by working collaboratively with other service providers. While in many cases, the guidelines will simply confirm existing good practice, it is hoped that as the guidelines become widely adopted, there will be long-term improvements in communication and accountability.

The guidelines are currently being promoted through key education network meetings i.e. Principals associations, social workers in schools, public health nurses, etc. This process should be complete by the end of term two, so that the guidelines can be used in any new projects for term three. The guidelines are also being publicised to groups which work within schools, through relevant network meetings.

This project has also taken responsibility for updating and publicising the existing directory of resources relating to the health curriculum which are available to schools. In keeping with Healthy Christchurch’s commitment to centralising information systems in the city, this directory was available through the Christchurch City Libraries website.

If you or your agency wants to know more, to get involved in any of these projects or to propose a new project, please contact us.