I love working with people

A desire to help families stay together and fulfil their God given potential inspires Hutt City Corps transitional housing manager Toga Tofilau.

I have a social work background and my passion is to work with people. Before I joined The Salvation Army I had a brief stint as a probation officer, and worked for Youth For Christ and ran pre-employment programmes.

I was brought up in the Presbyterian Church and my wife Liz and I started attending Hutt City Salvation Army back in 1999. Youth work stuck with me and I first joined the Army to work at The Inn, accommodation helping teens become independent.

I have been head of Hutt City Community Ministries and have been doing transitional housing here at Hutt City with Liz for four years. We work with seven families at a time, providing them with accommodation and a support programme over six months.

This transitional housing started out of concern for the amount of families who had to have children uplifted by Child Youth and Family (CFY). We had a conversation about wanting to do something to help these families, and CYF said, ‘If you can find somewhere to house them, we can help.’ So we approached Housing New Zealand and said, ‘This is what we’re looking at: keeping families together, with somewhere to house them and a structured programme.’ They agreed to provide the house and we provide the programme, working on parenting, budgeting and self-development.

With the parenting programme, part of it is group parenting. Every Monday we sit down together, all seven families, and go through the Toolbox programme, and we have speakers that come in from Plunket and places. We also have a Friday playgroup, modelling stuff. Then, it’s just talking about experiences that we grew up with and how can we change the reasons we got here.

For the budgeting, a lot of parents come through with bills. Some families don’t have anything to their name and it’s about putting money aside to work on that. After six months, when they graduate, we make sure they go into houses with stuff in them, a washing machine, fridge, beds. We work on grief, anger, self-awareness and self-esteem, and have counsellors on site.  

Before, it was CYF that referred families to us, but that’s changing. We still get a lot of families come through from CYF, from Wellington mostly and Palmerston North, but other agencies also refer to us and we’re open to community referrals.

It’s non-stop work, there’s always something happening, but I love working with people. For me, it’s that we’re all created in the image of God. We’re working with people that have lost the sense that there are things they can offer and that God’s got something for them. They don’t believe that. So, it’s about sharing the message and journeying with people.

The greatest commandments are to love God and love your neighbour. It’s not about being their friend; it’s about speaking straight, loving people, and journeying with them. I believe God has a plan for each person and I want to help them fulfil their God-given potential.

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by Toga Tofilau (c) 'War Cry' magazine, 30 May 2015, pp9.
You can read 'War Cry' at your nearest Salvation Army church or centre, or subscribe through Salvationist Resources.