Centre for at risk children ignored by SES

MANDY SMITH
THE founding teacher at a centre for children who have been removed from school for behaviour problems has hit out at Special Education Services which, she says, offered no support to the school when it was established.
She has joined three Hawke's Bay principals who criticised the quality and delays of the service services' in Tuesday's edition of Hawke's Bay Today.
Police Youth Aid, the Ministry of Education, Napier Intermediate School and William Colenso College set up the Nikau Centre in 2004 to provide schooling and support for "at risk" children aged 11 to 13 who have been excluded from normal schools.
It was the brainchild of a police youth aid officer who found nine children causing trouble on Napier streets after being kicked out of school. One had been out of the system for 17 months.
Founding teacher Amanda Jackson said the students accepted for the programme were in the top 1 per cent of children with behavioural problems, including severe explosive violence.
However, the service charged with dealing with those students, Special Education Services (GSE), refused to work with the Nikau Centre, saying it was unsafe and did not meet standard criteria.
"They heard what we were doing and were horrified," Mrs Jackson said.
"They called an emergency meeting and told us to back down because of safety issues.
"The behaviour team wouldn't support me unless the kids went to mainstream schools, but they couldn't because they were excluded."
Mrs Jackson, who finished at the school in 2006, said the centre fought on for three years with funding from community trusts, donations from other schools' operations grants and a Ministry of Education Innovation grant.
But its finances were at crisis point last year and it would have struggled to stay open were it not for a visit from Prime Minister Helen Clark in November.
"She didn't want it to fold and said 'Find the money'."
The school is now funded by the Ministry of Education as a satellite classroom on the Marewa School grounds.
Mrs Jackson said the Nikau Centre existed because GSE had not been effective while the students were in mainstream schools, and she was appalled by their lack of support. She questioned the time taken to access the service - GSE took 11 weeks to assess the first class.
"Whether its because these kids are outside the school system I don't know, but these kids existed and were in desperate need and GSE made it damn near impossible to get them back on anybody's books to go to school."
GSE regional manager Brian Coffey could not be reached for comment this morning.