Reports on what Canterbury men need from support services
The Canterbury Men's Centre (CMC) went through significant growth again in the past year and with this came some reflection about the work we do and how to do it better. These three reports evolved out of our genuine curiosity over the past 12 months, with those on our mailing list supplying much of the data.
Thanks to those of you that engaged with our surveys. CMC hope your reflections are honoured in the outcomes or suggestions of the reports and that those are useful to you in turn.
Hatched matched and Dispatched: What do Canterbury Dads Need? (April 2020)
The CMC changed direction on its previous work with dads toward a peer based approach. So they were seeking your thoughts about what gap they could best fill and what the community perceptions were of the needs of their dads.
Read the Hatched Matched and Dispatched: What do Canterbury Dads Need report [PDF].
The suggestions are broken down into the following categories:
- The New Baby Years “Hatched”
- The Relationship Years: “Matched”
- The Ending/Separation Years: “Dispatched”
The requests and suggestions were very large in scale. A nice challenge for the CMC and other groups in Canterbury that are responsible for the wellbeing of dads and whanau.
Supporting Canterbury Men in Post-COVID Times (October 2020)
With the initial challenges of the pandemic response having been engaged, CMC sought the thoughts of those on their mailing list about where men in the community are at, and how they are dealing with the current challenges.
Read the Supporting Canterbury Men in Post-COVID Times report [PDF].
This report provided a number of suggestions that were helpful to the CMC strategy later in November 2020 with those including:
- Continue with Blokes Books to address the lack of community knowledge about addressing men’s wellbeing needs
- Use "Male Call" and other means to inform stakeholders and carers in Canterbury about support for men as well as how to support men
- Continue with our counselling and scale it up
- Canterbury outside Christchurch was dealing with its own challenges and could use our help
- The CMC has a special role in helping men build skills to reduce isolation amongst them. This is something that we have taken quite seriously as an additional responsibility and incorporated it into our strategic plan (the other e already had a place on our plan).
Mid and South Canterbury Scoping Report (October 2020)
CMC's scan of the needs of men in Canterbury inspired a deeper look into the needs of men in Mid and South Canterbury, with this having been a commitment pushed back by the pandemic.
Read the Mid and South Canterbury Scoping report [PDF].
The CMC CEO received a very warm welcome from local stakeholders, leaders of community groups and those who had done some good work with men in the region or were aspiring to do so.
Recommendations from the report include:
- More exploration of this issue
We were encouraged to consult a number of other stakeholders, and see this initial engagement as only a very first step. We know that while the CMC has a role to play it is the community proper that will make something useful happen.
- Make Moderate Effort to inspire more counsellors in the region
There are careers in this area, with this having both economic and social benefits. None of the stakeholders we consulted expressed an interest in doing this. While they saw it as useful to their region they were hesitant.
We had a similar experience in Christchurch where we identified a need for a particular kind of counsellor but the main service engaged in that kind of counselling said they didn’t want to promote it as a career pathway, fearing that the wrong people would be steered toward the work.
- More Exploration but with the aim of Forming a Working Party to form a Men’s Centre/Service in the region
A number of the options above were supported but not seen as something those stakeholders interviewed thought of as their area of focus. Similarly, the CMC experienced many well-wishers for the work to be done, but few that felt it their responsibility to accomplish this. There is a call for such a service if the right people engage in it.