​The Champion Centre is elated to be selected as a finalist in this year’s Westpac Champion Business Awards.

It is an honour to be recognised among our peers in ‘The Press Champion Community Impact Award’, and to celebrate our mahi with the best of the Waitaha Canterbury business community.

We are proud to showcase and highlight the achievements of our people, as we continue championing our whānau to ‘realise every child’s potential’. We are looking forward to joining Canterbury's best at the awards ceremony on 24 November.

​Our thanks to everyone who’s helped make us a success story, and enabled Canterbury’s young champions to thrive, for more than 43 years.

Bella Lammers attended The Champion Centre as a baby and pre-schooler almost two decades ago. In July she returned to the Centre as part of a one-year internship programme. Project SEARCH is designed to give high school leavers with learning disabilities the work experience and skills they need to enter the workforce. Bella joined us for a 10-week internship where she very quickly became a valuable member of the team.

A number of long-serving staff remember Bella as a little girl when she came to the Champion Centre each week. This year, Bella was back as a colleague. Her tasks included setting up and clearing away morning tea trollies, stacking and unstacking the dishwasher, cleaning equipment and toys from the playroom, as well as sorting out the linen. Bella quickly learned the tasks required and carried them out with aplomb, freeing up time for other staff members to focus more on their roles.

It's a thoughtful process, always with the best possible outcomes for the child at its core and can't be achieved without embracing the new teachers as a vital part of the progression, and supporting them to read the cues and continue to realise the potential in every child. They play a pivotal role which enables a child and their family to take the next step in their education journey, with trust, hope, and confidence.
 
When all is said and done, Margaret and her team perform the 'finale', in our Champion children's intervention and transition to school. They are the end that leads to the brightest of beginnings. 

Congratulations and thank-you Margaret for all you do! ​

Learning to understand the world is a process of steps. Often we aren’t aware of what those steps are because they unfold without much thinking or attention. We must be aware of our bodies, our sensations, and the coordination of ourselves in space and with others. We must become aware of our family and caregivers and find a way to communicate and connect. And with each of these steps we must find a way to stay regulated – emotionally steady and at ease – so that we can take in, process and feed back the information that is present.

Music and movement can provide a way to achieve the regulation necessary to open up to the world. For one child in our session, stomping with movement and music is currently an important pathway to finding her way from overwhelm to calm. With stomping comes vibration, effortful control, expression, patterning, sound, rhythm, predictability, body coordination, and a whole-system integration. With stomping comes relief and the freedom to now give her focus to other things, other people, and other ways of engaging and interacting. This does not mean that stomping will always be necessary. Instead, it is a bridge and a learning as her body and brain find ways to create pathways of growth. It is also good fun, a form of play, and something that her peers and all the rest of us can join in with.

Stomping and moving together to music that day in programme was about so many things. It was an experience of connection and relationship where we all joined together and got to know each other better. It was a scaffolding of neurodevelopment, physical integration, and emotional awareness. It was the coordination of expertise from the music specialist, the play specialist, the early intervention teacher, the speech therapist and the parent to find a small piece of child-led intervention and support. And it was an expression of what the child has told us about who she is, what she needs, and what her next steps are for ongoing development.

Sometimes what happens in a session looks like simple child’s play. And it is! The world of child’s play is also a world of comprehensive planning, attunement, responsiveness, awareness and integration of intervention. 

‘My husband Gav and I are looking at doing some great Kiwi walks and camping under the stars. I’m looking forward to spending time with my whānau and friends and Covid willing, some overseas travel.’
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Marie retired from her role in mid-April. We wish her all the very best for the next stage of her journey.​

Have any graduates of the Centre gone on to pursue music?
We have a number of children who have grown up to be incredibly musical. Thomas Eves is the chief trumpeter at the CSO, and Jasmine Butcher is studying music at university. Another boy, Rohan Soper aged 17, who was born premature, has been learning percussion and has sat an exam through Trinity College. India Neville, now 21, is studying at a music academy in Canada.
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Where to now for music at the Champion Centre?
I believe everything has a season. I’ve done everything I’ve been asked to and wanted to do, and now it’s time to bow out. Music at the Centre is in very capable hands, as we have five talented music specialists, led by Sarah Marra. When I started at the Champion Centre, I was crying out, ‘please consider music.’ Now wherever I go people are singing and using music. All the therapists are using music in the most incredible ways.

What’s in store for Julie Wylie now?
I’ve been on this journey and it’s way bigger than me. I have my musical school in the community and run workshops for teachers and parents. I have also developed a Postgraduate Certificate in the Psychology of Musical Play Therapy. I am writing a lot and there are numerous stories to tell about my work with children at the Champion.

Julie captures it poignantly when she says;
‘every vignette is so special and every child I’ve met has taught me so much. It’s not about their limitations but about how children can fly musically. When you allow them to find their voice and let them be the leader, they take you on the most miraculous journey.’

​We express our gratitude to Julie for all her years of passion and dedication to our Champion Centre families.

We were excited and a little sad to farewell Kobe, as he makes his way to school. Thankyou for your heart felt words Hal. We think you are pretty awesome too. Go well Kobe and stay in touch.
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​'This is the last day at the Champion Centre for my beautiful Grandson Kobe, before he starts school. He has done so well and progressed unbelievably and that is because of the people that work here. They are the most amazing and caring people and I would like to thank them so much for everything they did for Kobe. They all "changed Kobe's life" and they should be very proud of that.'