Home Interaction Program for Parents and Youngsters
Reverend the Hon. Dr GORDON MOYES: On Friday, 26th October 2007, I met with a group of Aboriginal leaders in La Perouse and the past President of Sydney Rotary Gerry Rihs to present a cheque for $160,000 to enable the HIPPY programme to continue. HIPPY is an acronym, which stands for the Home Interaction Program for Parents and Youngsters. This is an innovative Aboriginal-run early-childhood enrichment project in La Perouse oversighted by the Brotherhood of St Laurence based in Melbourne.
Commencing in 2006, the program has 65 children, aged between four and five years. These children are visited by three indigenous home tutors who are also completing the program with their children, and a full time Coordinator who works with the support of a volunteer Community Advisory Committee. The children are from local Aboriginal families.
HIPPY is a two-year, intensive early-childhood parenting program. It targets the most disadvantaged families by helping parents in their homes to help their three- to five- year-olds develop “school readiness”, communication and relationship skills. There are strong connections now into the local Aboriginal population, including a community newsletter that contains both HIPPY and other local community information, and a HIPPY netball team of local children.
The Coordinator, Sherri Longbottom, has completed HIPPY-specific training and attended conferences in Israel, New Zealand and Australia, over the four years, and is very experienced and committed to the program.
The program is working with a target population that has issues of high levels of unemployment, low educational achievement, significant family disruption and mobility, and distrust of bureaucracy and authority. Drop-out rates are very low. Achieving higher rates of “school readiness”, the value for money achieved by early intervention, and the need for more support to the most disadvantaged communities are issues right now receiving significant attention at the highest levels of government, the media and the broader community. The time is right to gain government attention to the HIPPY program.
HIPPY has the infrastructure and support networks to enable it to expand, and a very down-to-earth practical approach that makes new sites possible in a relatively short time span. The Brotherhood of St Laurence has funding through the Telstra Foundation for HIPPY Australia to hold an Indigenous Community Forum in Sydney later this year, enabling representatives from indigenous communities around the country who are interested in setting up HIPPY programs to come together and talk to those at La Perouse about how to set up, and how we can fit HIPPY to their needs. There is an opportunity for Rotary Sydney involvement in this event.
HIPPY programs offer outcomes related to children, to families, to job readiness, and to community development. Each child/family is encouraged to participate over two years.
Back in 1980, at Wesley Mission I employed Aboriginal teachers who worked in the homes of the disadvantaged, helping Aboriginal children in years nine and ten and their parents, understand the importance of these children continuing their education. I also employed Aboriginal tradesmen teaching young Aboriginal men who had dropped out of academic learning to be motor mechanics, welders and bricklayers.
In 1992-3, while President of the Rotary Club of Sydney, I led members in physical work every Saturday in cleaning up the street garbage that had been mounting up for years following the blackballing by street cleaners of the Sydney City Council Street Maintenance of street cleaning in the area. This was as a result of attacks on street cleaners and garbage collectors following the disastrous riots in Redfern. The Rotarians also joined in designing and commencing construction of a two-storey house destroyed in the fires at the time of the riots to be built without cost to the local community.
Thus, this additional $160,000 from the Rotary Club of Sydney was the continuation of a longstanding commitment to the living standards of the indigenous community of Sydney.
My personal involvement in these events, and in many others including my recent involvement as honoured guest with the indigenous community of Moree to celebrate the 42nd anniversary of the Freedom Riders arriving in Moree to force the local council to allow indigenous people to swim in the Council pool. This follows extensive visitation to indigenous communities in every state of Australia and to a number of conferences with Aborigines concerning community welfare on housing, health, education and other issues.
My commitment on these issues goes back fifty years to February 1957 when as a young theological college and University student, I met with two other men, Doug and Peter. Doug was in his forties, an outstanding athlete, and concerned for the welfare of indigenous people living in Melbourne’s slums. He spent the next twenty years working among them as Magistrate, Minister of Religion and builder of accommodation and work programs. Doug became Sir Douglas Nicholls, Governor of South Australia.
Peter was in his mid-twenties, a good footballer, highly committed to the poor in the slums both as Minister of St Mary’s Anglican Church in North Melbourne and as Director of the Brotherhood of St Laurence, until he was promoted to be Archbishop of Brisbane and then Dr Peter Hollingworth Governor General of Australia.
I was still a teenage student but throughout my eight years of working in the slums of West Melbourne and subsequent twenty-seven years as CEO of Wesley Mission Sydney I have held a commitment to the poor, the homeless, the alcoholic and the indigenous people of our nation. This has been seen in the largest charitable developments in our history. Consequently, the privilege of handing on this further cheque from the Rotary Club of Sydney for the HIPPY program of the indigenous people of La Parouse to be oversighted by the Brotherhood of St Laurence was the fulfilment of a life changing encounter for me fifty years ago. 7 November 2007.
