What does sock sliding at schools and back sliding into penal institutions have in common?
Quite a lot if the common denominators are fun and youth@risk, as I found out at Baycourt when 100 concerned citizens came together to work out why many of our tamariki are freefalling into a life of failure, drug and alcohol dependence and violence.
Sponsored by local businessman, Regional Councillor and sock sliding champion of TBC Doug Owens, the 3 three hour think tank was focused on our youth being our future and the resources we expend on their development are an investment in our and their future.
Doug believes as I do when a family, whanau or friends have fun together like sock sliding, they stay together. When a community shares their common unity together, it can have a huge impact on helping our youth@risk not to back slide into a life of violence, drug and alcohol abuse and eventually end up in front of Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft, the key note speaker at the seminar.
'The poverty gap between rich and poor in NZ was one of the worst in the world and directly attributable to the youth@risk stats of all countries not just here”, he said. Poverty is a well worn trigger behind a lot of the cases in Judge Becroft's court and it won't change until we change.
Income and equality are way out of whack and I couldn't help thinking about my own back yard in Te Puna where the wealthiest bread winning parent in my daughters' school earns $3000 a day or $15,000 a week and the poorest just $100 for a day of hard labour - both of them in the Kiwifruit Industry. Resentment based on the haves and have nots in a community can be a pre curser for everything from drug and alcohol abuse to bullying and bashing.
For me the solution starts at school and it could be as simple as reading and writing. From my experience of working in low deciles schools up and down the country the story is the same especially for Maori. For every tamariki that cannot read and write by the time they are 8 years old they have 80% more chance of ending up in jail.

Tommy Kapai, Te Puna.