Our Impact with Wahine
On Christmas morning 2023, Ally woke in a house with her excited young children. This might be normal for most mums, but it was the greatest blessing and happiness for Ally, because the previous Christmas she had been alone because her children had been removed from her because of her meth addiction.
The City Mission team helped Ally turn her life around after serious addiction problems and become a fulltime mum once again. She attended our Wahine Whai Ora women’s day programme, which helps women manage addiction by working in groups and with individual counselling. Ally had been hurt badly by meth including being imprisoned and losing just about everything, including her kids.
But we – our expert staff and her fellow women programme clients - were an important part of her change and recovery.
When family life is hard, women are often affected the most deeply and can be the toughest to support because they are so caught up in the lives of others.
To maximise our help to women, we operate a number of women specific services which give them space and time to focus on themselves and their future.
Wahine Whai Ora runs both in the mornings and afternoons every weekday and has a regular roll of about 170 women. Roughly 20 new women come in every month to replace those who leave, but if a client leaves they know they are always welcome to return if life gets tough. As with all addiction clients, the impact affects family and friends. That is also the case with recovery – many, many more people are happy and relieved to see the results of our work with their family member and to get their loved one back.
We also offer other women-specific services, - the women’s emergency shelter and the women’s drop-in day programme.
The shelter is literally the last resort at night for local women who have nowhere else to stay. Our 12-bed unit is open 365 days a year and more than 155 women found safety with us the last year. Many come to us because of a crisis and they are now homeless after leaving abusive and violent situations. Many have lost care of their children, many have been turned away elsewhere because of addiction problems, but we take in everyone if we can do so safely. Many of our shelter residents also join the women’s day programme alongside others who have their own place to stay but come to us for company, support and our life skills courses.
Our women’s day programme lifted the wellbeing of 635 of Christchurch women and significantly improved the lives of some women who came to us in the worst circumstances. Our safe and welcoming space and our staff and volunteers help women heal through the wide-ranging courses we give women. We give them new skills and more importantly, new confidence, self-belief and a sense of belonging.