|
Year |
Decision |
Result |
|
1990 |
The New Zealand
Aluminium Smelter at Tiwai Point, offered on-site work
for SDE staff, doing the servicing of personnel
protection equipment, and packing disposable masks. |
Supervision and
transport to and from the site was provided by SDE
staff, and personnel were paid allowances for attending,
but the costs exceeded the income generated. |
| There was a
massive increase in attendees - from 35 to 80 – due to
CCS closing their workshop. |
Extensions were
added to the main building in order to properly house
the extra workers, and these included a conference room,
a packaging room and a new canteen. |
|
1991 |
SDE was awarded
funding to conduct a pilot study into all facets of
Supported Employment. |
SDE did not
believe that ‘placement first’ was the correct method,
as they had found that the true successes they had
enjoyed, were when the individual had been fully
prepared for employment before they were placed into a
position. |
| A second work
enclave was established, recycling wool packs to the
standard of the New Zealand Wool Board. |
This involved
sorting, cleaning, grading and mending with industrial
sewing machines, small cuts and tears in second hand
wool packs, before re-selling them. |
| The Tiwai Work
Enclave was restructured. |
The best people
for the job were selected to work there on a permanent
basis. Attendance allowances were paid, and Tiwai
started to generate income. True costings were now
charged for the work performed . |
|
1992 |
The packaging
department was opened for business. |
We quickly gained
a reputation for tackling small jobs that were very
labour intensive as well as larger contracts. |
| SDE presented
the results of their Supported Employment Study to the
Ministry of Social Development. They determined that
Supported Employment would work, but much needed to be
done to ensure that the right person got the job. |
SDE became a
founding member of the Association for Supported
Employment New Zealand. In Invercargill, SDE
determined that pre-employment preparation was critical
to ensuring that job applicants had the best possible
chance to succeed. |
| Community
organisations were invited to make the Kinloch street
site their permanent home for evening meetings. |
This community
involvement has proven to be an effective method of
obtaining and keeping wide support for SDE, as
ownership of our main complex is now held by several
hundred people of the community. |
|
1993 |
The Packaging
Department purchased folding machines, shrink wrap
tunnels and heat guns, so we could add shrink-wrapping
and heat-sealing to our services. |
Our Packaging
Department became adept at fulfilling the varied and
interesting contracts we received. |
|
1995 |
It was decided
that we needed to restructure the organisation of SDE
and give the decision-making to the workers. |
Five staff
members were therefore made redundant and six workers in
the Tiwai enclave were placed on full wages as the
income they were generating far exceeded the amounts
they were receiving in attendance allowances. |
|
This decision was the single most important step in
moving SDE from a Sheltered Workshop back to an
Industrial Work Unit. The immediate individual growth
that was displayed by the workers and staff at the time
was remarkable, and all of the success we have enjoyed
since then can be traced back to this time. |
|
Sheltered Employment, as defined in the Disabled Persons
Community Welfare Act 1975 (DPCW Act 1975) continued
however, as it was considered that “employment in
suitable occupations under conditions less stringent
than those found in normal work situations” was the
catalyst in enabling people with disabilities in the
workplace.
|
| SDE was asked to
look at demolishing houses, and decided to do so in
order to obtain timber that we could then sell for
firewood or kindling wood. |
This experience
taught us that there was a demand for dry firewood, and
also for kindling that was cut to length and uniform in
size. We removed and collected all of the nails and
sold them as scrap metal.
So that nothing was wasted, we obtained de-nailing
guns. These use compressed air to push the nails back
through the timber, to be easily extracted.
We realised that not everything in the old houses needed
to be demolished, so we invited a few auction houses to
mark the items that they wanted, before we started the
demolition. A number of items like windows, doors,
fireplaces, and mantelpieces were then carefully removed
and sold directly. We were also able to do this with
any good roofing iron and spouting. |
| The Wool Pack
Enclave was proving to be successful as far as output
went, but financially it struggled to break-even.
Dairy conversions started happening in Southland and the
number of wool packs required reduced drastically -
which, of course, impacted greatly on the price being
paid for them. |
The Wool Pack
enclave “broke away” from SDE and became independent. |
