Anna*

From not paying the rent to freezing vegetables
Anna* is a young woman in her early 20s, who cares for her 3 year old son. I met her just as she had finished her two terms at WELLfed. Over the past year, she has transformed her life.
A year ago, she didn’t often leave the house, she spent the time cleaning and watching TV. She hadn’t heard of WELLfed, but was suggested to go by the community policing team: “The cops came and brought me a food parcel … and they were like ‘do you want to go down to do WELLfed?’” Initially, Anna was reluctant to join: “When I first came I was not really interested to be quite honest, I was not used to leaving the house”. Kim remembers her coming, but leaving almost straight away: “there were too many people”. Maxine [senior tutor] did some one-on-one cooking with Anna, but she admits only coming to about half of the sessions.
The second term at WELLfed was quite a different experience: “This term, I decided I wasn’t going to miss any classes unless I had a valid reason for missing classes… I actually really enjoy it, I’ve made some good friends… [I enjoy] being part of a community … it’s been really good for me, joining the community, leaving the house, actually learning how to cook properly”.

Confidence and routine: “I probably have a better attitude”
When I ask Anna if her confidence has grown, she admits “I suppose so, a little bit … I didn’t realise that I had a confidence problem to begin with, I was just kind of like “I don’t like people”, but I enjoy the company around here.…”
Prior to WELLfed, Anna did not have a lot of routine in her life: “I wasn’t used to having a routine, leaving the house…. Coming here has helped me have more of a routine, be a bit more of a functioning member of society”.
Anna has recently left Porirua: “Seeing all the gang paraphernalia, I didn’t want that for my son. Trying to break the cycle – I grew up in really bad places, and now I just don’t want him to have the same thing. It’s part of the reason we moved, because of the gang paraphernalia and the house that we were in was ‘Healthy Homes’ exempt – cold and damp. The place we are in has a fireplace, warm, not damp”.
She has got into a good routine, and is settling into her new community: “I’m not afraid to get out of the house, I take [my son] to the park every day, I’m going to the library, going to the pools, going to park... and I’ve been playing football as well, over in the Hutt, so I’ve been meeting other people too. I’ve always been into exercise, but before I couldn’t be bothered, I have to say WELLfed helped me do that”.

“Coming here has helped me get my life back on track”
At the time we met, Anna was not working, as she is focussing on spending time with her son before he starts school. Although money isn’t plentiful, and financial stress is the reason she describes she split up with her son’s father, Anna is clearly clever and careful: “I’m using way more vegetables, whatever we don’t use [from WELLfed’s fruit and vegetable bags] I start chopping it up and putting it in the freezer, so we have a surplus of fruit and veggies, it’s been so handy coming here. The fruit and vegetable bags have been a huge help for me… probably saved me about $50 every week”.
She used these savings wisely: “that’s helped me put my car back on the road after at least 1 year, get a WOF, get a rego, so coming here has helped me get my life back on track… Before [the car was legal] I was catching the train over to come to class… Another thing that WELLfed helped me out with, they gave me a Snapper card that saved me $10, then loaded my community services card number onto it… they helped me sort it out…”
Anna has also benefited from WELLfed’s Next Steps programme: I’ve got a CV now, I’ve got a variety of other things, first aid course, and I went to a Dress for Success event … without those fruit and vegetable bags, I wouldn’t have been able to do it”.

Employment
Anna has had training post-school, she’s done courses in automative engineering and panel beating, but is struggling to get a placement for an apprenticeship: “Everywhere I go I’m told “we’re looking for a young lad”, or I’ve been asking for work placements even work for free for three months, but no one has given me the opportunity to do this yet”.
She started a full-time job painting at the beginning of last year, then went to part-time, though it was still 30 hours a week, then she left to focus on her bringing up her son. She is planning on doing a qualification in childcare once he starts school, despite the cost and resulting increase to her student loan.

Parenting
Anna acknowledges that she didn’t know much about parenting, but knew that she wanted to parent differently to how she was brought up: “That’s all I knew, a smack on the arse, then I was like nah, this is wrong”.
She’s excited to be joining the parenting class at WELLfed next term: “I want to get better at parenting as well, my son drives me mad sometimes, I love him to bits, but I want to find different methods that don’t involve yelling… I’ve gone from smacking him, to time outs, to raised voices, so I’m hoping to find out the next step to being a decent parent. I haven’t smacked him in over a year.” Having split up from her son’s father, they now share the parenting, so that Anna gets a break at weekends, which is helping her also: “Now being separated, I get a break every week, I feel I can parent better”.

Breaking the cycle
Throughout our interview, Anna has hinted at a difficult past. She hesitates, then tells us “it’s quite hard to admit, but…” prior to getting pregnant, she was a meth user. Throughout her pregnancy, and up until her son was about three months old, she managed to stay clean, but then started using again.
The concern that her son would be taken from her was the impetus to get clean again: “I was extremely lucky that I screwed my head on before OT [Oranga Tamariki] came and took him away from me. I was so lucky, other people don’t have that realisation and get the kids taken off them. … that’s what helped me get clean the second time, realising I was being a dick, because that’s all it was…” She had been wanting to make a change for a while: “I’ve been wanting to do it for ages, it’s just been really hard, actually turns out it’s really easy if you want to…. I mean, bits are quite hard, but if you want to do it, it will come easy…. [at first] I didn’t know where to start…”
Anna also acknowledges that she was luckier than some others: “I didn’t go into rehab – I also quit while I was ahead…. But part of the challenge as well, you can be clean, but it still takes your mind ages to get clean …. It’s taken me … I’m nearly three years clean, and I’d say my mind’s only really come right in the last year.
“I didn’t get a lot of support, not many people knew about it… I didn’t tell anyone – a couple of people close to me knew about it, they said if I slipped up they’d give me a 1-2, I’m all good with that, I’m not going to slip up, it’s mind over matter.”

A new start: “He wants to be in my presence”
Anna knew that she needed to leave the town where she was from to make a new start: “[Her home town] is such a small place, so once it gets out that you’re a meth-head, it doesn’t matter how much you change, it’s impossible to move on, in the eyes of other people. It’s easier to come down here and start again, pretend it never happened. If people ask me about it, I tell them about it, but it's not something I advertise.
“A lot of people said “why are you moving to Porirua, the crack problem is even worse”, and I was like “it doesn’t matter, I don’t know anyone down here where I can get it”, I still don’t know anyone, and that’s how I want to keep it, I don’t want to know.”
Anna is confident that she can move on from her past: “My dad said the other day that the only reason he lives with me is that I’m not a dickhead anymore (“his words”), that’s a good thing, that he wants to be in my presence”.
She also has great ideas of courses that WELLfed could run in the future, such as a “supporting women in healthy relationships” course: “Especially young women, everyone’s situation is different but a lot of young women get trapped in relationships… [we need help to] spot the red flags in our relationships… The stress of money is driving [violent] behaviour, anger, frustration, feeling hopeless, I was there literally three months ago”.
When I ask if there is anything else that she wants to add, Anna says: “This place is awesome, and I hope that so many more people get to get the same outcomes that I had, or similar”.
Prepared by Associate Professor Mona Jeffreys