24 hours: Jane Ferguson

Jane Ferguson is a social worker for the Salvation Army in Timaru. She has been involved in community ministries work for nearly 11 years.

I start work at 9am, but I'm here at 8.30am, unlocking, checking the answerphone. Then for 20 minutes, all the staff get together in the interview room. Because this is working out of a faith-based church, it's a big part of what we do and who we are, so we get focused for the morning, have a Bible reading, and catch up on what's happening in everyone's day.

Generally, our days are run by appointment book now. They didn't use to be, but now we have to fit in so many things, so we run to a schedule.

Monday, Wednesday and Friday is when the food bank is open, 9.30am to 12pm. It isn't by appointment, anybody can turn up to see somebody. And outside of that time, we'll deal with any emergency situations, if someone's house has burnt down and they have nowhere to stay.

Foodbank interviews could also lead to interviews and referrals for other things. The Salvation Army has the family tracing service, and we do the interviews here, then send the forms up to Wellington. We do home insulation referrals, we're one of the agencies referring for that. We do a positive lifestyle programme. That's new, we just got trained in February this year for that. It's really cool, it's one on one, and very much about a person stopping and looking at themselves, finding out what's going on for them, how they deal with things. It's a really good journey to be on with people.

We do finances and budget, helping somebody to manage their own. We work very closely with Work and Income; we're always talking to them and finding out what the latest is there, what we can do. We'll make sure that people have gone to Winz before they come here.

Advocacy has become a bigger thing these days. Although we have a generation that expects things, we also have got some that are very quiet, not sure of what their entitlements are, maybe they've been turned down once and they're too scared to try again. So we might go with someone to their appointment with Winz.

Underlying issues for foodbank clients; it might be that they're not approaching Winz to receive what's available from them, a family might be crippled by health issues, so they might need to go through that interview process with Winz, and get on the right benefit, or get a sickness allowance. It's about assessing and getting people sorted with what they do need.

There are lots of glitches when families break up – a lot of people are in a relationship for a year, and then out – it's pretty fluid. And that has its own repercussions; when they leave they've got to resettle into another place – and they can only apply once in a 12-month period for help with bond.

So it might be do to with rehousing, relocation. A person might be looking after the children four days a week, and the other parent has them for three so they need a whole extra set of furniture, but they're maxed out on welfare.

A lot is about people's choices, and the consequences of them, and just having to be realistic about what they have to deal with. And there are addictions, all sorts of reasons why people do the things they do and are in the situations they are in.

And just maybe the ability of coping hasn't actually been taught at home. Some don't have the ability to make good choices about things, they don't think things through.

A lot of people are ashamed of what has happened to them, and they don't come and see us until things are really about to fall apart – the power's going to be cut off the next day. A lot of it what we do here is crisis management. And then we try to get them to buy into walking along with us, get them to look at themselves and think about what else they could do in that situation, dig a bit deeper to get them to open up a bit more about what's going on.

I don't know that we always get the big fuzzy feelings when you think you've had a breakthrough. Although last week there was a young lady who came in with a couple of bags of goodies – she said she was in a position to be able to help out, and we'd helped her out when she hadn't been. So it was quite nice to hear that.

It's definitely worth it. The workload's pretty big, but I'm a people person. If I was able to blab all day and not have to write anything down I'd be quite happy. Give me people any day, I love that.

We run a number of community groups: the Connections group, a kind of self-help networking group; we have a craft group that happens every Friday; senior citizens meal and social group get together monthly over the winter months; and we have Mainly Music, a pre-school group.

I'm on the committee for healthy homes locally, and for Children's Day.

The phone is always ringing. I have a love-hate relationship with it. We get lots of requests for help, and calls from agencies wanting to know whether we can help someone.

The workload is increasing, because we're doing the more in-depth stuff. It's not about just the food bank or "we need a bed because we've got another child" or "we need accommodation for the night", it's about digging deeper, going on a longer journey with people.

The community is really generous. There are a lot of people genuinely wanting to help, with monetary contributions, food, household goods, clothing. Our wonderful jam makers, people who bring in farm fresh eggs, businesses that continue to be regular donors. We've had support lately from a PSIS campaign, Paper Plus, Curves gym. And every night, the Bread Basket gives us everything they have left from the day, and we take it to families we have been working with.

And we have an awesome team of volunteers; we wouldn't tick without that team.

We will call the hard shots – we will tell people that they need to get their act together, and will offer to work with them and help them get their act together. But that's different to judging someone or having preconceived ideas about somebody. Everybody who comes here starts off with a clean page. But if someone's coming for a number of food parcels, there might be more to it than what they've said, and then we use interviewing and counselling skills. We might not get the full story, that often comes to us in layers.

You have to let it go when you go home. That's really important. I know it can get to me, and I know my boundaries, and that's where I think supervision is such a good thing – it's about sharing your workoad and what's going on with you with someone from outside of here. It's about self-care. That's something the Salvation Army is pretty hot on.

Confidentiality is very important. The information people give us is theirs, and they can uplift it at any time. We have to get their written consent to talk to people on their behalf.

I finish at 3pm, although I'd find it very easy to do way more, but we are blessed with wonderful bosses, who are just so sensible – they say, these are your hours, and you really shouldn't be here after that.

I believe it's part of me, working out my faith. Faith in action – it's not just about coming to church on Sunday, my faith is 24/7. This is me. It's who I am.

- © Fairfax NZ News