Connections

Presbyterian Support Upper South Island (PSUSI) is a social service agency whose strategic mission incorporates helping families to flourish and function well. Practice-based research led PSUSI to realise that many families suffered from ‘relationship poverty’.

Families sometimes struggled to get on with each other, and parents often felt tired, stressed and isolated from the institutions that could support them. Developing meaningful connections with other people was seen to play a key part in addressing this.

In further community research, PSUSI identified that lack of time and work issues provided significant challenges for households. In particular, lack of time was seen as a sizeable barrier to people accessing community services and facilities.

Workplaces and schools play a crucial part in many of our day-to-day lives as children and parents. These environments, and the relationships people have in them, can also play a role in supporting families.

PSUSI’s action research initiative was named Connections. The overarching aim of Connections was to provide further support for families through primary schools and workplaces by strengthening relationships between:

• family members (particularly parents and their children)
• schools and parents
• employees and employers
• families and their support networks (in particular other parents, and a social service agency).

In addition, Connections sought to generate information in response to the listed questions:

• Can families be supported through schools, and if so how?
• Can families be supported through workplaces, and if so how?
• What incentives and mechanisms would encourage further uptake of family-friendly initiatives in the workplace?