Heritage of Caring

The closure of the Auckland Bethany Centre last month ended a chapter in The Salvation Army’s residential services for pregnant girls and young women and their babies.

But Major Campbell Roberts (Territorial Social Programme Secretary) told around 70 former staff and volunteers, Salvation Army officers and a handful of former clients, at a farewell ceremony at the centre on 12 November, that The Salvation Army would not turn its back on young pregnant women in need.

‘The current need for similar services is as great as ever,’ he says. ‘The closing of Bethany is not an opportunity for The Salvation Army to stop working with young women impacted by family or individual crises. Rather, it is a challenge for The Salvation Army and the wider community to find more and better support for those who desperately need it.’

Major Roberts paid tribute to the wisdom, leadership and vision of Major Eunice Eichler, Major Dorothy Nisbet, Major June Sunkel and Leanne Adams, who were present and represent the final four decades of management at Bethany. The four women were unanimous in their praise for generations of Bethany staff and volunteers and in their hopes that The Salvation Army will somehow fill the gap that Bethany’s closure creates.

Aux-Captain Gerry Walker (National Manager of Addictions and Supportive Accommodation) says initial work is underway to develop similar services to those provided by Bethany, and discussions with other service providers are taking place to see if partnerships are a feasible way of designing and delivering them.

Major Roberts says the ‘careful and prayerful’ consideration to close Bethany was based on a long-term trend of welfare agencies moving their services from institutions to providing services in the communities where their clients live.

Another factor in its closure was that referrals from Child Youth and Family (CYF) and District Health Boards were funded but declining. A significant number of clients were non-funded self-referrals, and The Salvation Army’s philosophy of not refusing care meant the centre had been running at a significant deficit for some years. This was compounded by the high ongoing costs of maintaining the 98-year-old building.

Bethany was the last of what was once a nationwide network of Salvation Army maternity hospitals. Its hospital wing closed in 1976, and with the introduction of Domestic Purposes Benefit and the Contraception and Sterilisation Act and society’s more liberal views on single motherhood, the centre’s focus evolved to providing accommodation and antenatal, postnatal and parenting education for girls and young women.

Bethany has been widely recognised as a pioneer in its care and programmes for young women and their babies. It led the way in open adoption, single-parent education programmes, and in the 1960s encouraged fathers to be present during the birth of their baby at a time when the practice was frowned upon. Bethany matron Major Thelma Smith was a public advocate for the availability of contraception for young women long before such pragmatism was widely accepted.

Major June Sunkel, whose retirement includes the short-term fostering of new born babies, says her time at Bethany was the pinnacle of her officership. During her tenure (1997-2008) she saw the number of adoptions continue to fall as more girls began to see single motherhood as a viable option. She also witnessed a growing number of girls arriving with multiple and complex problems to solve. By now, CYF was referring some of their toughest cases to Bethany and many girls had been given the choice of attending Bethany or having their baby taken by the agency.

‘The saddest cases were the girls who had no concept of mothering because they had not been mothered themselves,’ she says. ‘Our job was to encourage them in their role of being a mum and give them the confidence that they could actually do it and many of them became very competent mothers as a result. You have to remember that many of these girls had no positive role models in their lives, no stability at home, they’ve been transient and they have come from impoverished backgrounds, so there is no quick and easy solution.’

Typically, girls would come to Bethany when they were 20 weeks’ pregnant, have their baby and stay for another three months or so. They could also return as community clients for up to six months and received follow-up home visits by their social workers. In recent years, about 60 girls passed through Bethany each year.

Bethany’s last manager, Leanne Adams, says Bethany’s clients in recent years could be roughly divided into high-risk teenage girls and women in their 20s who face having their child uplifted by CYF. Most were from impoverished and dysfunctional families, were homeless and lived transient lifestyles, suffered abuse or violence, were usually in debt and may have arrived with a substance abuse problem or tangled up in the criminal law courts.

‘It has been extremely satisfying work and it has been distressing and sad when we see the lives many of these girls have lived and the challenges they face with a new baby,’ saus Leanne. ‘But we have seen great progress in many lives—and that’s the reward.’

For enquiries about The Salvation Army’s Bethany Centre, email Major Graham Rattray (Assistant National Manager, Supportive Accommodation Services)