Sowers Trust

Sowers provides wrap around support for the whole family. This includes youth development groups, mentoring and social work support to parents / caregivers.

We provide prevention and early to mid intervention programmes for young people. This includes youth development programmes and mentoring and support for the whole family.

Outcomes from some of our programmes include young people that have a greater sense of belonging, feel safe, have developed resiliency and are making positive choices.

Our Background

Sowers was set up as the community services arm of Howick Community Church. Incorporated in 1988, it has been providing mentoring and programmes to young people within the community since that time. In 2007, we developed a complimentary programme/service to sit alongside our youth work and this programme provides wrap around support for the whole family. This was developed to meet a growing need within our community.

CATCHMENT

We are based in East Auckland however we take referrals for the whole of Howick Ward (Pakuranga through to and including Flatbush). We also take referrals from Beachlands, Maraetai and parts of Otara.

FUNDING

A portion of our funding comes from Ministry of Social Development. The rest we need to find through donations and funding applications.

REFERRALS

These primarily come from the Police (youth aid and family violence teams), Oranga Tamariki (formerly Child Youth and Family), local schools, Women’s Refuge, Whirinaki (child mental health) as well as a number of other local organisations. We are open to self-referrals.

Our work is carried out by a team of suitably skilled staff, with qualifications in youth work, social work, sociology and an occupational therapy.

Mentoring and Youth Work:

We provide mentoring for young people for up to a year or more depending on the situation. This involves weekly connections where we talk to young people about what is going on in their lives, build safety plans if required and tailor appropriate programmes to provide information and education for the purpose of helping them to develop tools and strategies that they can use now and in their future.

Our programmes are varied and include life skills, self-esteem, tools and strategies to allow understanding of emotions, particularly anger and also discovery camp where we take youth away for four days so that they are able to discover their potential and begin to develop a sense of identity and self-worth.

Family Work:

We also provide social work support to families. Common reasons for referral are domestic violence, budgeting, parenting, advocacy and information giving along with support to specialist services should this be required. Where we are working with a young person, we try to support the parent/caregiver as well as the young person as we believe this is more likely to bring about long term change. We also offer Triple P parenting programme either in a group setting or through one on one connections.