Palmerston North Methodist Social Services looks to year of service

Part of the mural in the Palmerston North Methodist Social Services reception area. It is by Wendy Hodder.

What a difference a year makes!

With 2020 putting a lot of pressure on Palmerston North Methodist Social Services' food bank and social services, we have been fortunate to gain extra support from generous individuals, and some reallocated funding coming our way from grants and contracts.

This has allowed us to extend food bank opening hours, and increase the hours and availability of our social workers and counsellors.

With the extra resource available to the food bank, we have been able to employ a staff member in the logistics of getting the food into the food bank itself, leaving our professional social workers time to focus on supporting clients to move out of food-insecurity.

We continue to aim at supporting clients to not need our food bank services any more.

PNMSS is keen to ensure food insecurity is not accepted as normal in our society, and is working strategically with other parties on a regional strategy to support pathways to food resilience.

PNMSS has a history of supporting interns into counselling and social work careers.

This year we will again take trainees into these roles, while also supporting a strategic review of counselling training in the region, as there are significant shortages of qualified and experienced counsellors in our city and region.

Our counselling is for couples, families, children over 8, and individuals. Counselling provides a safe space to explore issues or problems which may be acute or historical because sometimes we feel stuck or dissatisfied with our situation in life, or we may be seeking support and affirmation.

In 2019, we reviewed our family education programmes to update them with a bicultural lens, and the result is a single programme called Dealing with Feelings that supports primary and intermediate-age children and their adults deal with strong emotions such as anger and grief.

This programme runs in the afternoons for seven weeks, and will run each term this year. This programme combines two highly successful programmes for grief and anger, allowing us to meet the needs of families each term, rather than making families wait until the programme they want is available.

Also new for 2021 is our adult programme Destination Me that is designed to help adults visualise their future and work out how to get there.

The programme runs over six weeks with two-hour sessions and aims to help participants identify their strengths and areas for development, increase communications skills and self-confidence, and create a plan for moving forward. The next programme will start soon.

On a strategic level, the organisation will be reviewing its strategic plan this year, making sure we are still as relevant and heart-driven as we were 58 years ago when founded by the compassionate outreach of the Broadway Methodist Parish. A new purpose for our Main St-fronted workshop is needed, giving us an opportunity to serve the community in new and exciting ways.

For more information on us and our services, ring 350 0307 or email admin@pnmss.nz.

+ Kim Penny is the general manager of Palmerston North Methodist Social Services.