This time last year a mother of five was almost at her wits end.

But thanks to a campaign aimed at supporting families her kids are doing great and she has the confidence to pursue her dream.

Panmure resident Rebecca Le Noel, 38, is one of the mothers who has received support through the Family Works Guardian Angel initiative.

Her youngest son Pererika Kirk, 9, developed meningococcal disease at 11 months of age and she says he has been difficult to handle since then.

"For me I was finding it a bit of a struggle with handling him. He was just crying all the time and was doing really badly at school actually.

"I just thought it was the way I was parenting him," she says.

She was directed to Family Works, part of Presbyterian Support Services, last June and received home visits from a staff member who enrolled her in a parenting course.

"It really set my mind straight saying it was not my fault why things have happened that way.

"What they really taught me is that you've got to fix yourself to fix your kids," she says.

Ms Le Noel, who also has five grandchildren, says the change in her helped Pererika to change.

"I see the difference in Pere all the time. He's a lot happier as a kid. He's not crying and being really irritable anymore like he was last year."

She says his teachers also noticed the difference.

The in-home visits and the parenting strategies course helped Mrs Le Noel address her own issues and stopped her from feeling like "a failure as a mother".

"For me I really flourished," she says.

Talking through things and identifying where the actual problem lies is the key, she says.

Mrs Le Noel credits the help she received over the five months with giving her the confidence to pursue her dream of being a nurse.

She has almost finished a six-month bridging course at Manakau Institute of Technology and is hoping to be accepted into the bachelor of nursing next semester.

"Everything I've ever wanted is just to become a nurse," she says.

"I have the confidence to know that I can succeed and it's given me that incentive that if I'm at tech and I'm lost or don't know what I'm doing, to ask for help."

Perhaps the most important lesson is that there are always people willing to help, she says.

"If you struggle with your kids it's a great system.

"Really it's not necessarily the child's fault and it's not necessarily the parent's fault. It could just be the whole lot really."

The Guardian Angel initiative, which kicked off early last year, aims to raise funds to enable Family Works to provide support for families in need.

The campaign tries to make sure children feel safe in their homes by providing parenting courses, counselling, mentoring, buddy programmes, budgeting support and even food parcels.

Visit www.angel.org.nz for more information.

- © Fairfax NZ News