Media

In this page we will publish articles that have been in the media that will be of interest to our group.  Click on any of the links below to read the corresponding article:

New Zealand Herald: 21/01/08 Grandparents find secret of youth

Judy Turner, News Release: Dated 4/8/7

Evening Post:  Dated: 3/5/01

Evening Post: Dated: 22/6/01  To Save A Child

North and South Article: Dated: July 2003

THURSDAY , 28 AUGUST 2003  Western Leader

The Gisbourne Herald: Dated: 8 June 2004: Gisbourne GreyPower Members calling for Government to offer more financial support to Grandparents Raising Grandchildren

North and South Article: Dated July 2004 Brainy Lady

Hawkes Bay Today: 15/09/05, Lucy Craymer

Jill Worral, GRG Trustee, report on her research and presentation to 4th Annual Child Law 2005 Conference in Auckland


Becon Whakatane - by Judy Turner Ocotber 2006


NZ Herald, May 30 2006: Article

Pat Booth, Artile 24th June.














Marches

Evening Post: 03/05/01

"Grandparents are ready to march through the streets if the Government continues to ignore their concerns, says the national co-ordinator of Grandparents Raising Grandchildren, Diane Vivian. She says if Government continues to ignore grandparents plight after a series of planned events, there will be nationwide street marches. "We've broken the cycle of abuse", she says, "but we're being penalised for it and the children in our care are being discriminated against".

Support groups are mushrooming as grandparents emerge from the isolation they've experienced. There are now 26 groups around the country. It's unknown how many people are in this situation and the group wants a register established. Vivian has surveyed legal firms and found everyone of them to have clients in this position. Grandparents feel let down by CYFS and the Department of Work and Income. (DWI). DWI staff seem to lack the understanding and training to deal appropriately with families and children, she says. The group has made comparisons between grandparents' financial position and that of foster parents. In addition to community funding for child support, foster families are entitled to birthday and Christmas money, school fee's and a clothing allowance. Even in the 50 percent of cases where placement of children with grandparents has been through CYFS, there has been no information about the entitlements. In many cases grandparents find out about the unsupported child allowance only through sheer persistence. It ranges from $71.60 to $102.30 depending on the age of the child. Community funding for the foster parents is between $86.09 to $129.42 a child. "Grandchildren may not be able to go on that all important school trip, pay school fee's or have a school unifrom. Some grandparents are going without food to ensure their growing grandchildren eat properly.

Why are we being penalised for wanting the best for our grandchildren," says Vivian. One of the demands is for a limit to the number of allowable number of court hearings. At present grandparents and children face the disruption and expense of custody hearing up to six times a year. A ministry of Social Policy spokesman, replying on behalf of CYFS and DWI, says the Government is aware of the situations that arise when children are cared for by other family members and is working on formulating solutions.

Ministry officials recently met with Vivian to give advise on what further non-financial support is available for the affected grandchildren. Until a long term solution is found, specific contacts have been made available at DWI to ensure people had access to information about entitlements. He says the Government is considering how to involve people who have had a signigant relationship to the child, for example grandparents, in the process of resolving guardianship, custody and access disputes and law changes are possible. On the legal aid, the ministry of justice is aware of the problems being experienced by grandparents and is conducting a review of eligibility for legal aid. Where children are in CYFS care, they generally have all their costs met by the state. For those not in CYFs care, the State has no legal responsibility once care and protection issues are resolved. "However despite this, it is realised that the parents can no longer care for the children and in that situation some assistance is provided for their support, as happens for the general population."

Other assistance available:

 * The unsupported child benefit.

* The community services card for the child. The disability allowance may also be available where the child has an ongoing disability involving regular medical expenses.

* If a grandparent is on a benefit, they may be eligible for other assistance through DWI.

* If the grandparent is on New Zealand superannuation, they may be eligible for family assistance through the IRD."

 Margaret Willard wrote this article for The Evening Post.    

Go back to Top

Evening Post: 22/06/01 To Save A Child

The death of Carterton toddler Lillybing has raised questions about the role of grandparents in protecting infants from unsafe families.

Margaret Willard reports on one Maori woman's struggle to save her grandchild. Lilian remembers very clearly the Sunday afternoon last year when her daughter walked out on her baby. She'd come home from a visit to the shops in her middle-class Hutt valley neighbourhood. Her husband works as a machinery technician, and together the Maori couple has spent 20 years raising three daughters. At 42, Lilian, whom The Post has agreed not to name fully, was looking forward to a new life. She planned to study to fulfil her dream of becoming a teacher. She'd enjoyed raising her children who are, except for the baby's mother, still at secondary school. She was looking forward to becoming a grandparent. Her eldest daughter, 19 had become pregnant to her partner of several years.

In spite of Lilian's efforts to point out the drawbacks and responsibility involved, her daughter had been keen to have a baby for some time now. Lilian did her best to help the couple care for the unborn child, and her daughter gave up smoking and produced a healthy baby girl. What she found out when she walked in the door that Sunday has changed her life, and forced her to postpone her dreams. There was a note from her daughter saying she loved both her parents, but could no longer live with her partner. Lilian had been concerned the couple might move out together, because they were ill-equipped to care for the baby, but she was not prepared for this. " I'd had no idea things were so bad between them. I was bitterly disappointed, " says Lilian. She went through "all the emotions - shock, anger and sadness." The father moved out, and when the pair reconciled, they wanted the baby back and sent the police to retrieve her. Our neighbour hid the baby, and I refused to give her up, and eventually the constable left. Then we had to set up an emergency Family Court hearing. Their lawyer set an adversarial tone, which ignored the best interests of the child, and it was very stressful. "We were granted interim custody, but our daughter was crying and the father was swearing at us. It was a horrible experience - I wouldn't wish it on anyone."

The hearing was followed by seven more, every three weeks, and it was the beginning of a long estrangement between daughter and parents. Her daughter went to live with her partner and his family some distance away, and Lilian became aware of circumstances there that she was determined her granddaughter wouldn't be exposed to. "Sexual abuse was happening in the baby's presence", she says, "but to protect her I had to work so hard. I had to prove my own worth every step of the way." While the dispute continued, the baby's parents were allowed access at a relative's home. They never turned up, and after the first hearing did not appear in court. Lilian found the court hearings extremely traumatic. She was cross-examined by her daughters lawyer, and had to explain things about her daughters behaviour she wished she didn't have to speak of. She felt torn, but she knew she had to answer to protect her grandchild. Worse was to come. Lilian faced embarrassing questions about her own fitness as a parent, based on information her daughter had provided. "They labelled me as a control freak," says Lilian., "but I only wanted my granddaughter to have the best possible start in life, and I'd tried to show them how to care for their baby." In the end I decided it was best to put all my own skeletons on the line. Why should I try to hide anything?"

Lilian was granted interim custody, but that was only part of the battle - she and her husband had to work out how to make ends meet with an extra mouth to feed. After the first hearing, Lilian applied to the department of work and Income for the unsupported child allowance. "All the time our daughter was away from home and on the DPB she sent us only small amounts for the baby, if at all. She explained to DWI that she had interim custody, and three times she took the baby to appointments initiated by DWI. After a series of increasingly frustrating phone calls, Lilian was told her daughter was going to get her baby back, and a family group conference had already been held, so the unsupported child allowance would not be granted. " I couldn't believe they would turn down a five month old baby. She was entitled to enough money for her care, but was getting only a tiny morsel of it. I became really angry, and I quoted the United nations Convention on the Rights of the child at the case manager. Her daughters relationship then ended after she was assaulted by her partner. " The assault was a turning point in the case," says Lilian. "But I had to give the information to the court, and I hated doing it. It's such a relief things have come to a conclusion".

The custody arrangements can be challenged again, but Lilian's daughter has assured her she won't try for custody again. She is now contributing substantially to the baby's care. "A lot of trust has been shattered," say's Lilian, "and I want us to rebuild it. She's involved with caring for her daughter, but still not ready for the full responsibility". Lilian says they'll keep the baby until she is independant. "She is our little girl now - you can't put a judical judgement on bonding. She is our taonga" Parenting is a lot different second time around, she's found. "I feel I have been given a second chance, and I can do extra that I couldn't do the first time. And having been through it before, you know what to expect." But it's still not easy. "I'm sad that the baby isn't with both her real mother and father" she says. "She's become attached to her koro (grandfather), but it should be her father she takes to". Her older daughters have also taken on extra responsibility, and sometimes are resentful their sister "made the baby" they sometimes care for. "But they've learned what it means to bring a baby into the world, " says Lilian. It's been a hard learning experience, both for her and her daughters. "In our (Maori) culture, it's natural for grandparents and other relatives to look after children when necessary, but in this society grandparents have no rights at all. Once I had speaking rights in court, I was treated fairly, but the system doesn't work in the best interests of the child."

Lilian also found solace in the Grandparents raising grandchildren support group. "I realised I wasn't the only one in this situation, and that a lot of people have much worse cases than mine" she says. "It was good to be able to go along there and talk." Other members of the group say she has been very fortunate to incur legal costs of less than $2000. Lilian's lawyer, Fiona Morris, has several grandparents seeking custody of their grandchildren amongst her clients, and says most are surprised to find others in the same position. "They're so isolated". Morris says. "It's an amazingly selfless thing to do, to go through this process as well as putting their lives on hold to care for the children. Usually in the end everything works out really well for the grandparents". Lilian, meanwhile is thankful to be able to get on with looking after her granddaughter. "I'm proud to belong to my iwi, my hapu, and my whanau, and to be doing a jolly good job with my own family".   

Go back to Top

Grandparents looking after P addicts' children

THURSDAY , 28 AUGUST 2003  Western Leader

By MELANIE GLOVER
A growing number of grandparents are taking custody of children whose parents are methamphetamine addicts. The scenario is widespread and bound to get worse, Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Trust national convener Diane Vivian says.

Mrs Vivian says the problem is twofold for desperate grandparents who are worried about their own offspring as well as their grandchildren.
"These children are traumatised," Mrs Vivian says. "One grandmother saw her two-year-old grandchild pretending to inject themself with a knitting needle.
"It's scary, but that's the reality. They act out what they have witnessed," she says.

Mrs Vivian says children exposed to methamphetamine-related behaviour may feel abandoned by their parents and suffer psychological problems, including post traumatic stress and anxiety disorders.

She says some grandparents, now in their 80s, are seeing their teenage grandchildren turn to methamphetamine, also known as P, as well.
Others are struggling to cope with domestic violence fuelled by the drug.
"Some grandmothers have been beaten up by their own daughters," Mrs Vivian says.

She says many grandparents struggle to find legal fees to apply for custody to keep youngsters safe. "A lot of them had gone into retirement mode and downsized their home and all of a sudden they have three children," she says.

Mrs Vivian established the trust four years ago and there are now 34 support groups nationwide. "I think the grandparents who do this are absolutely amazing," she says. Trust committee member Dominique Young says taking responsibility for grandchildren is a big step. "If you take custody of your grandchildren you have to rearrange your whole life," the west Aucklander says.

Ms Young, who is also a member of the P Users Family and Friends support group, says grandparents are aware the bond with their own children may never be restored. "You really are forgoing your relationship with your child for the relationship with, and safety of, your grandchildren. "The children are at risk because the parent is thinking of meeting their own needs. The needs of the children are going to become exceedingly secondary," Ms Young says. "When you have someone addicted to such a highly addictive drug you are in it for the long haul," she says.  

Information, phone: 480-6530 or see www.raisinggrandchildren.org.nz.

Go back to Top

North And South Article

The best thing about grandchildren is that after hours of happy chat and storybooks you can hand them back and head home to blessed silence and a G&T. Except, as JENNY CHAMBERLAIN discovers, grandparenting is changing, getting tougher, more demanding. For one battling band the familial ties are more like manacles. Welcome to The Grandparent Trap.

Around age 50 a ritual started among the Westlake Swans — the women’s crew I used to row for. At our North Shore reunion dinners photos are flourished and the score updated: Lyn, Robyn, Noelene, Pauline, Kay, Pennie, Jan and Jenny: nil; Liz: one; Kay and Brenda: two apiece. All eyes turn admiringly to Viv Robertson, 56, (above) who’s acquired six grandchildren in six years: three-month-old Abigail, two-year-old twins Dominic and Oliver, Keeley, two, Brynn four and Riely six. Awed, we listen to “retired” Viv’s working week: nappies, meal preparation, music group, kindy pickups, baby bathing... it all sounds exhaustingly familiar. Some days she leaves home at 7.30am arriving back at 7.30pm to find husband Grant “patiently waiting”. But Viv, who nursed for six years and helped Grant run the family business for 20, is in grandma heaven. She has all the fun of confident, experienced mothering without the yoke of responsibility. “I’m fortunate. I’m still young. I retired early at 50 and I’m bouncier and fitter than six years ago. I’m doing what I love.”

The two young families — belonging to son Scot and daughter-in-law Ngarangi and daughter Rachael and son-in-law Viggo — are now her priority four to seven days a week. Wednesdays are free but she’ll give them up too if needed. Weekends at the beach house often entail taking grandkids so their parents can have time out. Viv counts herself privileged that her involvement is welcomed, that she can bond with her grandchildren in these crucial early years and lighten the load for her children. It wouldn’t occur to the Robertsons that their support translates into a sizeable economic contribution to two households and therefore the nation’s GDP. They’re just happy doing it. Their storybook grandparenting causes heart pangs for other Swans with grandchildren overseas and an altogether different anguish for those in sole income households, with demanding jobs and/or elderly dependants. For us this level of supergran support is dreamsville — yet it’s increasingly what modern parenting requires. Viv Robertson envisages resuming golf, bridge and genealogy three years from now — when the five older grandchildren are at school. She and Grant will travel. “I’ll be as free as a breeze,” she laughs.

Or will she? Will the Robertsons find themselves in just as much demand when/if all four parents return to the workforce and turn to their supergrands for after school and holiday backup? In fact, given their youth and health, it’s not inconceivable this big-hearted couple will, during their late 70s, actively participate in the raising of a third generation. And for some less fortunate grandparents, as we shall see, the 70s is when a very different kind of grandparenting begins. What’s certain is that grandparents’ significant economic and social contribution is currently unquantified. There are no statistics indicating their indirect contribution to GDP, in fact no-one bothers to count their input at all. According to Adele Quinn, Christchurch-based Statistics New Zealand census data output manager, the 2001 census doesn’t even address the question of being a grandparent. Given their increasingly crucial input into society the dearth of research is curious.

A Wellington Age Concern spokesperson says grandparent issues “are not a prime focus of ours”. Judith Davey, director of Victoria University’s New Zealand Institute for Research on Ageing, had a recent Marsden Fund application for research into grandparenting turned down. Aray of light has been unexpectedly shed on the work of this invisible army by Hamilton-based demographer Janet Sceats who runs Portal Consulting. Among Sceats’ research interests are New Zealand fertility patterns and the compatibility between motherhood and career. She was commissioned in 2001 by the National Institute of Population and Social Security in Tokyo to research the policy implications of low fertility in developed countries. Japan’s low 1.4 children per woman fertility rate (ours is two) has its government worried. Sceats’ research revealed, almost by accident, how important it’s becoming for parents to have healthy grandparents to share child-raising and how suddenly this need has emerged. Every knows, says Sceats, about the “quiet revolution” — the number of young New Zealand mothers returning to the workforce — but even she was startled to discover it happened within a single generation. In 1975 about a quarter of women whose youngest child was under school age had returned to the workforce. By the 2001 census that had almost doubled and women are doing it sooner. In the past, explains Sceats, women tended to wait until their youngest child was at school before going back to work part-time. “The really interesting phenomenon is that 58 per cent of women aged 20 to 29 are taking almost no time out. They’re going back before their baby is one and increasingly going back full time. That raises issues about who is going to look after the children.” Another “quite upsetting” trend, says Sceats, is increasingly young professional women aged 30 to 34 are choosing not to have children — indicating New Zealand may be heading towards the entrenched low fertility Japan, Spain and Italy are experiencing. It’s an individual choice which has serious national implications: fewer young working adults to support growing cohorts of elderly. Comparing her observations with fellow demographers in Australia, England, Wales and Japan, Sceats found, despite cultural differences, two common grandparental themes emerging: the growing importance of having young, fit grandparents close by to free mothers to return to work and grandmothers as the key mechanism permitting young urban professional women to risk embarking on motherhood. Given the high cost of childcare in New Zealand, the lack of tax relief and subsidies, working mums who place their babies in the care of strangers can end up with almost no money in hand. “The availability of the grandmother to provide childcare can make or break matters,” says Sceats.

Grandparental geographic proximity, their relative youthfulness and health are becoming economic and social imperatives. Frail, lavender-scented old ladies aren’t much use to hard-pressed working mothers. Eight years ago Auckland architect Jane Aimer designed a town house to be built next to her family home in Remuera for her parents, Joan and Hugh Aimer. The closeness permitted the senior Aimers to continue the childcare support they’d been giving Jane, and husband Paul Kelly, since their first child, Nicholas, now 16, was born. Aimer says she, her two sisters and brother were raised to believe “we could have any career we wanted to”. Childcare for all 11 grandchildren of the four Aimer offspring — who all live near each other — was Joan and Hugh Aimer’s contribution to ensuring this happened. Jane, who says she “didn’t cope very well” with staying home and child-raising, would drop her pyjama-clad children off every morning and her parents always had breakfast waiting. Hugh Aimer was a “fantastic help”, fixing equipment at Parnell and Orakei kindergartens and the couple joined a Parnell young mums coffee group. When Hugh Aimer died in 2002 among his mourners were many mums for whom the couple had acted as surrogate grandparents. Joan Aimer, now 80, is still involved with raising the youngest grandchild. Reports Sceats: “One woman said to me, ‘Who else can you ring at 7.30am and say, “Mum, I’ve had a terrible night, the baby has a fever, I can’t take him to creche and I’ve got an 8.30am meeting”? My mother would be there in a heartbeat.’ We are almost going back to an earlier generation where grandmothers were really actively involved in bringing up grandchildren.”

Much of course hinges on age group swings: postwar parents, who had their children young, make young useful grandparents but baby boomer late starters may — if their children continue their pattern of delayed fertility — be a bit had it by the time grandchildren appear. “It means you can’t necessarily look to the previous generation as role models,” says Sceats. Wellington relationship consultant Suzanne Innes-Kent says children need grandparents as much as ever but what’s changing is grandparents’ circumstances: “Families are scattered, grandparents are working to a much older age, there’s all the pressure to keep young. There’s no point where grandparents are actually let off the hook.” Younger grandparents may end up on several hooks: working, caring for elderly relatives, parenting and grandparenting.

New Plymouth grandmother Ngaraina Brooks, 48, models her own grandmothering on the woman who raised her — her great- grandmother Rangimarie Wairangi Toro Hetaraka. The third child in her family, Brooks was adopted under the whangai system by her great-grandparents. Rangimarie and Toro raised her in the family homestead in Okaiawa (south Taranaki) where they had already whangai-ed at least five other grandchildren, nieces and nephews. “I was the last of a line. The homestead was always full of whanau and our gardens were big enough to feed all my great-grandmother’s children and her mokopuna. I think this was my preparation for the grandmother role. When we have family gatherings now, although I’m not the eldest, I am the one they gravitate to.” For Brooks, providing 21st-century style childcare support for working offspring within the traditional Maori extended family structure works well. Four generations, including her great-uncle Pat Toro, 89, live harmoniously in her farmhouse in the heart of South Taranaki countryside. Brooks is a learning skills tutor at the Western Institute of Technology at Taranaki and juggles her working day round her husband Doug’s shiftwork so they can care for four-year-old Ethan, the son of their single daughter Kaylee. The Brooks’ childcare frees Kaylee to work, continue studying for her degree and stay off the domestic purposes benefit. The Brooks’ elder daughter Rhegan, also single, at home and tertiary-educated, is currently full-time mothering 15-month-old Mheiajn. Brooks expects to help look after Mheiajn when Rhegan too returns to work. The mother of five children herself, she knows she’ll eventually be grandmother to many mokopuna and will look to the memory of her kuia — Rangimarie — to show her how. She will teach them Maori and encourage them to “really appreciate elderly people… Treasure them because they are your link with the past.” Does she ever feel put upon? Does she dream of having her life back? “Sometimes I do. It’s such a busy household that sometimes I think, oh, why are you doing this? And then you reflect on it again and you know it is for your mokopuna, you’re doing it for the future, for them.” Brooks says when the pressure comes on her daughters talk about building their own houses in the next-door paddock. “They’ll leave home eventually and then a few hearts will be broken.”

Ideally, whether you’re a picturebook and playdough, full-on gran, or a squeeze them in around work, golf and Barossa Valley wine tours type, grandparenting should be primarily a support role: cheering encouragingly from the sidelines as your children sally forth into parenthood. What happens to grandparents when drugs and alcohol, violence, abuse or mental illness render their children unfit to parent their grandchildren? As society’s ills dismantle family life, more and more grandparents are falling into the second time around parent trap. Far from escaping home at bath-time, they are being left literally holding the babies 24/7. At life’s tail end, when strength and resources are limited, this form of grandparenting can be a life-sentence.

Diane Vivian’s brick house on a hill in the North Shore suburb of Birkenhead looks like any other orderly, hospitable New Zealand home: flowers round a sunny patio, a trickling fountain and a swimming pool. Inside: generous rooms, big windows, panoramic views, a spotless kitchen and comfortable furniture. Vivian, 53, an energetic blonde with a smoky voice and a piercing gaze has become a beacon of hope for a growing band of battling grands. She formed the Grandparents Raising ­Grandchildren Trust in 1999 following a conversation in a carpark outside a North Shore access centre. That day she found herself talking to other struggling grandparents and realised she wasn’t alone. These were ordinary grandmothers like her — who’d successfully raised families and mostly already had grandchildren but who had had one child go badly off the rails. These grandmothers were raising abused, neglected and ­traumatised grandchildren and coping with Child, Youth and Family (CYF) social workers, court appearances and their own health and financial problems with minimal community and government support. Convinced they were the tip of an iceberg Vivian advertised in her local paper and her phone “never stopped ringing”.

The Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Trust now has 2000 members caring for an estimated 4000 grandchildren. Vivian spends 30 to 60 hours a week writing newsletters, lobbying, and listening to heartbreaking stories. Totally unpaid. The stories are all versions of her own — distressing, sometimes sickening scenarios: grandchildren discovered starving and filthy with drunk or drugged parents in cold houses; phone calls by concerned neighbours to CYF; sudden appearances of daughters beaten by violent boyfriends with frightened ­grandchildren in tow; these same daughters bolting back to the same violent men at the first opportunity; daughters constantly moving to escape unpaid bills; benefits squandered on drink and drugs; grandchildren neglected, beaten, confused, sexually abused… These stories remain largely untold in public. Grandparents in this situation don’t talk for fear of further raising the ire of their own children and thereby placing the grandchildren in more peril. “I’ve had grandparents who have been beaten by their children. I’ve grandparents who have had to go into safe houses. They’re threatened with violence and rape, have their washing slashed on the line… some live in constant fear.” The final scene has one of two endings: the grandparent, unable to bear the suffering of their grandchildren, arrives, scoops up the kids and drives them out of danger. Or a CYF social worker, with grandchildren in tow, arrives on the doorstep of an elderly widow, or a retired couple who long ago exchanged the family home for an easy-care unit. There isn’t usually a shred of furniture, clothing or equipment necessary for raising kids in these grandparental homes. There is rarely the budget either.

W hen Aucklander Sally James, 69 (names altered to protect the children), first took her three grandchildren in eight years ago, she had the support of her retired husband and her younger daughter and, at 61, was still physically up to looking after them. James’s older daughter Kim — the children’s mother — was in a long-term de facto relationship with a controlling, violent man — the children’s father. He physically and psychologically abused Kim and his children but Kim seemed incapable of leaving him or standing up to him — despite the fact that before she met him she’d been intelligent, strong-minded and had run her own business. The Jameses offered Kim and children sanctuary numerous times but, says Sally James, Kim always went back — behaviour which she now recognises as battered woman’s syndrome. Drugs, alcohol and violence were features of the relationship from early on but Kim finally lost any remaining ability to control her life and protect her children when, as a result of a beating, she suffered a brain haemorrhage. As Kim sank into memory-loss and ­alcoholism her partner continued to abuse his children. CYF finally ­intervened when the oldest grandchild, then seven, received a beating from her father which left her with bruises covering her face and . Following a doctor’s checkup and a visit to Starship children’s hospital, CYF placed the little girl in the care of her grandparents. Two weeks later, following the father’s arrest for assault, the two boys were also placed with their grandparents. It cost the Jameses $8000 in legal fees to secure custody of the three children and they gave up any hope of a quiet retirement. In the intervening years both Sally James’ husband and younger daughter have died — losses for which she has had no time to grieve. She has developed diabetes and suffered a heart attack. Her determination to keep the children together, with her, in the only safe family home they have known — and to prevent their father regaining custody, which he has threatened to do — has not diminished, but her strength to cope with three lively youngsters (now aged 14, 12 and 10) is running out. James’ retirement savings have all gone and she battles to keep going on her superannuation and the unsupported child allowance which, as a grandparent raising grandchildren, is the only benefit she’s entitled to. Despite the fact she is doing exactly the same job as a foster parent, but alone and on fewer resources, she receives lower benefits.

 Foster parents receive bigger board payments for children they care for, plus an array of extras including weekly pocket money, clothing grants, Christmas and birthday gift allowances, medical and counselling expenses, holiday grants and assistance with dental bills and incidental school expenses. They also receive training and the support of an established national organisation. Based on the April 2003 CYF caregiver schedule, if James was fostering her three grandchildren she would be receiving a total of $487.03 per week and would qualify for all the extras too. She would be younger, healthier, almost certainly employed, or have an employed partner or husband helping to support her. As an elderly, sick, sole grandparent raising two grandchildren she receives a bare $311.33 unsupported child allowance, with no extras. By comparison, a single woman supporting just one nine-year-old on the domestic purposes benefit would receive approximately $324 per week. Because she owns her own home — and that’s about all she owns now — Sally doesn’t qualify for legal aid to pay a lawyer should the father of her grandchildren attempt to regain custody. James’ grandmothering instinct drives her — despite her difficulties — to keep the children together rather than separated and shunted round a series of foster placements. It seems extraordinary that she, and thousands of others like her, should be penalised for doing this. It’s quite common, says Diane Vivian, for grandparents to take the children in, say nothing and try to cope without claiming any financial help. If they are awarded custody and guardianship through the courts and start receiving unsupported child allowance, Winz ensures the biological mother doesn’t continue receiving the domestic purposes benefit. Explains Vivian: “Mum gets angry. She wants her money [source] back. Does she really want the children or does she want the money?” Biological parents will then do and say anything to get the children back and extraordinarily usually have no trouble accessing legal aid — crucial financial help which grandparents are generally not entitled to. Says Vivian: “Your marriage may not survive, even after 40 years. Your health may go downhill and at times the stress will bring you to your knees. You lose your retirement, the joy of being a real grandparent and go back to nappies, nits, homework, children who are severely challenging and broken sleep.”

V ivian was born and raised on Auckland’s North Shore, has been a geriatric nurse aid, a community volunteer, ran a Herne Bay video store and was president of the Video Retailers’ Association for five years. For eight and a half years she has been a consumer representative for the Video Film Labelling — screening films up to M classification on the large television in her sitting room prior to their release in video stores. In 1999 she and husband Erin, a fencing contractor, suddenly found themselves responsible for raising two little girls — the daughters of a difficult foster child. Danielle, 10, and Rachelle, 11, are half-sisters — the offspring of two fathers and a foster daughter who the Vivians had cared for from age 14. They have three adult children of their own — all parents now — and three biological grandchildren. They fostered a second child and this second foster daughter now has a small son — their third foster grandchild. At one time they were raising five children under their capacious roof. If you combine their biological and foster offspring they have parental ties to 11 individuals and have clocked up a good deal of parenting and grandparenting experience — all of it tested to the limit by Danielle and Rachelle’s mother. This foster daughter, now 32, was a handful from day one. She has had three children to three different partners, a history of instability and undesirable and destructive behaviour — the full extent of which Vivian, to protect her granddaughters, will not divulge here. The Vivians had only patchy contact with the girls during the years their mother and her second partner moved around the country — always to the best house in the best street, “until the bailiffs arrived”, says Vivian. Sometimes one or other or both the girls would be deposited with the Vivians for a few days. In 1999 the foster daughter and children moved from Nelson to the North Shore, swiftly followed by her partner. Following reports of violence, child neglect and abuse CYF’s Takapuna office uplifted the children and put them into Barnardos’ emergency care. “CYF rang us and said will you take the children? It’s the hardest thing you can ever imagine. We were finally free. We were going round the country buying antiques. We had a Saab convertible. We thought hey, this is it. My husband and I talked and talked and talked and we decided no. We had had the mother and gone through 18 years of hell. We felt we’d done our bit for society. We said no, we can’t do this any more. It’s going to kill us.” A CYF social worker was picking the girls up from the home, running them to school and kindy, collecting them at the end of the day and keeping them in her office until 5pm. The girls were frightened, confused and upset. In the midst of all this, to give the girls a treat, Diane took them home for a weekend to watch her niece compete in a jazz ballet competition. They had a wonderful time and on the Monday morning Diane — struggling to keep her emotions in check — dropped them off at school and kindy. “That afternoon there was a knock at my door. There stood the social worker with these two little girls. They had their bags packed. They were so excited to see me again. She said, ‘I’m sorry Diane, we don’t have any beds left, you’ll have to keep them.’ The look on those children’s faces. I couldn’t shut the door. That’s how it came about. Then came hell.”

Danielle and Rachelle’s mother accused the Vivians of being evil people who had never cared for her, or her children. Diane Vivian — in her work for the Video Film Labelling — was accused of showing pornography to the girls. (Films rated R13 and over are actually handled in Wellington.) She found herself being grilled by social workers. “All of a sudden you become the problem. You have to stand up in court and prove your integrity. Excuse me! I had to go to all my friends and get affidavits saying we are of good substance, of good character. This is so wrong. I have had two grandparents ring me this week saying this is too hard. We can’t do this any more.” Vivian gave up her unpaid video retailers’ presidency. She says a lot of grandparents have to give up paid employment because their grandchildren are so traumatised. “I couldn’t even go to the bathroom without these girls beside me. If they lost sight of me they would scream hysterically. They couldn’t hold a knife or fork, didn’t stay in bed at night and were terrified of wind and rain. They had to be retaught even basic skills from scratch.” It’s been, says Vivian, “a completely life-altering experience. My husband and I haven’t been out together alone for five years.” Vivian found friends and acquaintances couldn’t cope with the dramatic change in her circumstances. “I felt isolated. Friends of 40 years disappeared because I had these two out-of-control children who knew things beyond their years. Who used the most offensive language. Many times I wanted to give up.”

Five years on and $5000 in legal fees later things are going fairly well, though the Vivians’ daughter Kelly says she wishes her parents had never fostered Danielle and Rachelle’s mother. Vivian says her biological grandchildren don’t miss out on her attention because they are still only babies and she will ensure that, as they grow, there will be enough of her to share around. “But Kelly looks at the horror of what we have been through and sees it continuing through another generation.” In terms of raising Danielle and Rachelle, Vivian feels her role is much closer to mother — “albeit an old one” — than grandparent. The girls are settled in school and she’s made it a policy to be honest with them. “My girls are very aware of what has happened in their lives and how. I believe in telling kids the truth but only up to their level of understanding. They are proud that Nan’s helping other grands who are raising grandchildren. We went to the South Auckland GRG Christmas party and there were 70 grandchildren there and 49 grandparents. My little one said to me, ‘Nan are all these children being raised by their grandma and grandpa?’ I said yes and she said, ‘Boy, things must be really bad’. “One grandmother I was talking to had a wee baby of what I thought was nine months. In actual fact he was 18 months. He had a scar — from being thrown by his stepfather — that ran from the centre of his head up to the crown and snaked back round his ear. That little baby had to learn to feed and crawl again and here were his grandparents teaching him. “You will never know by looking at these children — and my girls — that they carry scars but the scars are there.” Both Danielle and Rachelle are bright. Danielle at six couldn’t hold a pen, form a letter, recite a nursery rhyme and had rarely been to school. Today she is in the top group in her intermediate school class. The Vivians have custody and shared guardianship of Danielle and Rachelle but the girls no longer see their mother.

Why then do these damaging scenarios drag on and on before someone intervenes? Partly, says Vivian, because human beings stubbornly cling to the hope that biological parents will get their act together, emerge from their fog of addiction and dysfunction and begin parenting. But mostly it’s because these families are transient, making it “difficult for a grandparent to keep a constant eye on what’s happening. Ours moved every two months over a period of two years — 12 moves in all.” Grandparents are also reluctant to step in because they know they’re not really up to raising a second set of children. The crunch comes when the situation is serious enough for CYF to get involved, the court issues a care and protection order and the children are taken out of the parents’ home and placed in 28-day care. Vivian believes her membership represents perhaps half the grandparents in New Zealand who are officially in this situation. Data from the 2001 census indicates New Zealand has 6060 kin carers — that is family members caring for children — of whom 4416 are grandparents. There are no figures for how many children these grandparents are raising but Vivian estimates, by multiplying the figure by New Zealand’s two child per woman fertility rate, they are responsible for around 10,000 grandchildren. She stresses this is a very conservative estimate. By comparison approximately 5000 New Zealand children are in stranger foster care, with all their education, food, clothing and medical costs paid for by the government. But there would be a lot more — with a corresponding cost to the state — if government policy had not changed in the late 1980s.

Jill Worrall says a major change in foster-parenting and child welfare policy occurred with the 1989 Children, Young Persons and their Families Act. Worrall, a grandmother, former foster parent and foster care social worker, was a founder member of the New Zealand Family and Foster Care Federation when it was established in 1976. In February 1996 she published Because We’re Family, a thesis on kinship care covering the particular plight of grandparents raising grandchildren. The thesis contains many moving passages from family accounts but since she completed it, says Worrall, the situation’s got worse and help — in the form of realistic benefits and an agency dedicated to looking after the interests of this invisible but very needy group — has not been forthcoming. The 1989 act sets out a hierarchy of placement options for children of unfit parents and family tops the list. During the 1970s, explains Worrall, 53 per cent of children in state care were Maori and most were placed with Pakeha foster parents. “You’d place them and they’d get into foster care drift — going from family to family.” For every five years in care children had an average 6.5 placements. These children tended to lose their identity and constant moving increased their sense of insecurity and rejection and resulted in institutional abuse, sometimes far worse than the situation they’d been removed from. Maori leaders calling for the return of Maori children to their whanau spurred the change of direction — combined, says Worrall, with significant downsizing of the welfare state from 1984. This shift from foster (state) to family (kin) care mirrors similar changes in the UK. “The state couldn’t afford what it was costing to keep children in foster care and by placing children with family they cut the foster care budget.” Unfortunately — but predictably — the new act made no provision for supporting grandparents. The assumption seemed to be that blood ties somehow would solve everything. “Government should be saying we will pay as much as it costs to keep these children supported in these families. Instead they are saying the state shouldn’t have to move in and pay. Until there’s a crisis [the state] doesn’t want to know.”

At one level the act appears to be working,” says lawyer Kate Woodd, who is voluntary legal advisor to the Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Trust and a trustee. “More and more children are being parented within the family by grandparents or other kin but the burden has shifted and financially the support is not there.” It was while Woodd was working as a Family Court lawyer in Henderson, West Auckland, from 1996 to 2001 that she became aware of the “staggering” number of grandparents in dire straits. “These were good citizens, who’d worked all their lives, saved and had pretty good family situations but had just one child who’d gone off the rails. They were dealing with drugs, alcohol, glue sniffing, fetal alcohol syndrome… things they weren’t prepared for.” These grandparents came to Woodd for help in getting custody and in most cases weren’t eligible for legal aid. Woodd began to recognise a pattern: while CYF was involved with settling grandchildren with grandparents extra resources such as counselling, psychotherapy, respite, clothing were freely available. But once settled CYF would “write that child and family off the books” and no further follow-up would take place. CYF also has a tendency, says Woodd, to encourage grandparents to make application for custody via the Guardianship Act 1968, instead of the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act. “This absolves the agency from taking any action themselves. “CYF would say you’re the best person to have the children, go and see a lawyer. CYF realised the cases were serious but weren’t putting priority on them because they could see there was a person in the family who was reasonably secure.” This, says Woodd, saves a few public dollars at the outset but grandparents often use retirement savings to fund the legal work thereby running up large legal bills. Woodd has been stunned at the legal fees grandparents spend on custody cases — the longest case known to her lasted 11 years with fees of $240,000. Legal costs soar partly because there’s nothing to prevent biological parents making repeated court applications challenging custodial positions or access arrangements — irrespective of which act they’re made under. “It’s never a done deal. Even when the final custody order has been made they can keep coming back,” says Woodd. “Even when custody is obtained the family and its dysfunctions and abuse do not go away. Without support, without therapy for the children, grandparents get worn down. The day they say, ‘I’m too old, I’m not well enough to deal with this, it’s up to someone else’ is a very very sad one. It means they’ve lost hope and the children have lost their family.” Woodd believes CYF which is “stressed, stretched and run by burnt-out social workers” is part of the problem: “It’s a dying monster which needs to be completely deconstructed.” She says CYF’s core services should be contracted out to specialist ­organisations which should be compelled by legislation to deliver.

In May 2002, Woodd sent an urgent open letter to all MPs outlining her concerns and calling for grandparents raising grandchildren to have recognition, benefit parity with foster parents and access to legal aid. Most MPs wrote back an acknowledgement — nothing more. Grandparents raising grandchildren have gutsy Diane Vivian speaking up but what they really need is a champion in government. Right now it’s hard to see where their phoenix will arise. Commissioner for Children Roger McClay sees his office as the true advocate for the trust and says he feels “quite passionately about it because I’m a grandparent myself”. But McClay retires in September and there’s no word yet about his replacement. He says he’s met an Auckland woman in her 70s caring for a brand-new baby. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to that baby in 10 years.” Quite. McClay says over time government has not given families as much help as the 1989 act indicated it might. He has hopes the new Families Commission will “develop policy” and has been instrumental in setting up an across-party children’s caucus for MPs interested in children’s issues. The Families Commission was a key condition of United Future’s support for the minority Labour-led government. It will be set up by July 1 2004 and is well-resourced with funding rising from $2.4 million in the first year to $9.2 million in the fourth year and beyond — considerably more, as McClay points out, than his funding ($2.5 million a year). But it seems unlikely this new will specifically champion grandparents raising grandchildren. Its vague, elastic brief is to advocate for families generally, encouraging debate and ­“promoting, stimulating, commissioning and publicising research”.

Diane Vivian and her trustees are pinning their hopes on United Future MP Judy Turner, 46, mother of three aged 16 to 21 and former foster parent herself. Turner admits she’s a novice in the House and sounds nervous about the weight of expectation resting on her power to make a difference. A former part-time teacher at Whakatane Intermediate School and community worker for Ohope Christian Fellowship church, Turner got into parliament on her third attempt on United Future’s party list in 2002. Certainly Turner’s heart is with GRG. She has raised the issue in the House, has had other MPs approaching her about grandparents in difficulties in their electorates and says she’s on track to put some pressure on those who have real power. But in reality this nice MP “on a learning curve” is still figuring out which end of which thread to grasp as she plunges into the legislative and policy tangle surrounding family issues. As soon as she looks at seeking benefit parity with foster parents for grandparents, “I come up against what is the legal status of these people? I’m beginning to wonder if guardianship is what I’ve got to start with. Things can be pretty slow to move around this place and I find it quite frustrating. “The best thing I can do immediately is get some kind of dependable benefit and allowance paid to them and get them access to legal aid.” The key will be finding out how many children there are being raised by grandparents. It would be simple then to calculate how much “they would cost us if they were in foster care”. Which just might spur the government into action. As Turner says, Diane Vivian’s grands aren’t asking for much. “Just enough so that it doesn’t break them.”

Resistant” is how Grandparents Raising Grandchildren legal advisor Kate Woodd describes Steve Maharey’s attitude to the trust and its gutsy grands. Maharey delegated responsibility for Child, Youth and Family to Ruth Dyson in the May 16 Cabinet reshuffle but, as Minister of Social Development and Employment, he remains lead minister on the trust and its issues — mainly because they are so wide-ranging. Certainly it seems, despite the groundwork GRG has done with him and despite his inclination to be well-disposed (he describes Diane Vivian as “wonderful”), Maharey really hasn’t quite got it yet. He doesn’t perceive grandparents as a distinct group within the broader context of kin-caring (other family members caring for children) and he rejects the notion that old age, poverty, isolation and ill health give their situation special urgency. “At most meetings I’ve been to most grandparents are quite lively and young. You get 40-year-olds who routinely — because of drug and alcohol abuse — find themselves looking after their grandkids.” The trust says the reason Maharey is so cold on the issue of benefit parity with foster parents is because he is afraid such an initiative would open the floodgates on claims. Diane Vivian says Maharey told her categorically at a 2001 meeting with MP Ann Hartley that there would be no more funding. Maharey denies this: “What I told them was we had to go through the process of making sure they were well informed about their entitlements”. To him the problem is not that grandparents can’t manage on the unsupported child allowance but that many of them are unaware they are entitled to it and so are not coming forward to claim it. And he does in fact worry that bigger benefits would trigger a claims grab: “Other caregivers are going to see any movement by government towards more money as the signal they should be approaching us and then you’re talking about sizeable sums.” How much would it cost to give grandparents parity with foster parents? Maharey estimates about $8 million a year. One thing he does admit is that this newly-visible and fast-growing gang of grands represents a worrying trend: “Families fall apart more often in New Zealand which is a frightening thing. It means we are going to see more of what you are talking about.” So what’s the way ahead? Is a stand-alone agency the answer? One which deals directly with struggling grandparents and helps them sort out their problems? An official version of the GRG in fact?

Maharey says the government “wouldn’t countenance a stand-alone arm of state dealing only with grandparents and grandchildren”. A better way would be to “build up the capacity of the network that Diane Vivian runs”. Vivian spends as much time as she can raising awareness by speaking to groups like Probus, on maraes, to gerontologists, hospitals — any organisation which may have a shred of ­influence. Maharey gave GRG a small amount of administrative money in the 2002 budget: $11,250 of government funds annually for four years. Vivian is accountable and writes an annual report to CYF which rings her regularly “to see what we’re doing”. The money covers some expenses: Vivian’s phone accounts, website and postage costs and reprinting the trust’s booklet. “We are just squeaking by.” Vivian is keen to step up her activities however because she’s worried monthly newsletters are not reaching her grandparents — mainly because support groups in poorer areas don’t have money for photocopying and postage — “another way these grandparents are held in isolation with no information”. Beefing up GRG into a fully functioning support agency is the ideal solution, she says. Among other things “we could organise courses for grandparents that reflect their needs”. But the most urgent worry is how much longer can she keep advocating for this increasingly desperate group of people. If these children flow back into the foster care system the state will have to pick up the tab. It seems only logical to give support and assistance to grandparents now to prevent that happening. Vivian simply can’t figure why foster children and their caregivers get suitable help and grandparents who face the same problems don’t. “These children are severely disturbed and can’t access help. Are some of them going to be the child-killers of tomorrow? Unless something is done the answer is yes.”
 

Go back to Top

Gisbourne GreyPower Members are calling on the Government to offer more financial support to grandparents looking after grandchildren.

By Lisa Mills
GISBORNE Greypower members are calling on the Government to offer more financial support to grandparents looking after grandchildren and to put an end to what they describe as "blatant discrimination".

The call comes following the national Greypower annual meeting at Auckland where members heard from the Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Trust.
Gisborne Greypower member Lex Gordon said he was shocked to hear some grandparents had lost their homes because of the financial burden placed on them because they were looking after their grandchildren.

The group now wants the Government to increase the unsupported child benefit to equal the amount paid to foster parents.

"We are not saying foster parents should get any less just that grandparents looking after their grandchildren should be getting the same," Mr Gordon said.
"The children are entitled to a life and at the moment there would be more financial benefit if they were living with strangers," he said.

Census 2001 figures show over 4000 grandparents had taken on the role of parent to their grandchildren.

As Gisborne had the highest proportion of youth in New Zealand, it was believed there would be some financial "horror stories" to match those in other parts of the country.

Mr Gordon said in many cases grandparents who had taken on the role of parenting their grandchildren had no money left. Some had to sell their homes as a result, he said. "If they were foster parents things would be a different.
"They would be able to access all the extras that could make a difference for the child."

Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Trust national convenor Diane Vivian said there had not been a support group in Gisborne for about five years and the trust was keen to see one reinstated.

Grandparents raising grandchildren was a wide-spread issue not only in New Zealand but around the world.

"Although the Government is to raise the unsupported child benefit by $15 a week in 2005 it is still behind what foster parents receive," she said. "There is a significant number of grandparents raising their grandchildren as primary caregivers. The trust has 2300 members and that number is growing everyday."
Foster parents received about $30 more a week and special benefits, Mrs Vivian said.

One of the main issues faced by caregiver grandparents was the children came at a time when income was diminishing but the child's needs were growing.
There was also the issue of legal costs, with some grandparents spending up to $120,000 battling for custody of their grandchildren often to protect them from severe social, emotional and psychological problems.

Because many grandparents had an asset they were not entitled to legal aid but their children were, said Mrs Vivian.   That meant parents could keep challenging for custody in the Family Court, she said. Some grandparents had lost their homes or had been forced to downgrade because of financial worries. Mrs Vivian supported the call for financial equality. "These are the grandparents who take on this role out of love and concern for the two generations of children involved."

Lisa Mills
Reporter
The Gisborne Herald
 

Go back to Top

North and South, July 04, by Jenny Chamberlain

Brainy Lady

She drinks strong coffee beneath a quartet of Jane Evans paintings — four frames of swirling pink and red flowers on a white wall. Outside, beyond the terrace and the glossy lawn, the countryside holds its silent end-of-summer breath, broken only by a raucous tui in a pohutukawa.

One might surmise, given her composure and this very pleasant environment, that all is well in Robin Fancourt’s world. Indeed, on a midlife checklist she’d tick more boxes than most. A blue-eyed blonde with an enviably slender figure tailored head-to-toe in black, Fancourt’s still pretty at 56. A well-known New Plymouth paediatrician, who’s specialised in helping abused, particularly sexually abused children, she’s a founder and/or member of several influential children’s lobby groups and the much-quoted author of Brainy Babies — a readable handbook on infant brain development published by Penguin in 2000.

In the June 2003 Queen’s Birthday honours she was awarded the Companion of the Order of Merit for a lifetime’s work with children — recognition which delights her “because we don’t normally acknowledge abused children like this — we just forget about them.”

She is still happily married to Michael, a surgeon at New Plymouth hospital. “Robin didn’t really want to come back to Taranaki,” Michael confides — they returned so he could take the job. His is the ride-on mower parked in the garage alongside a comfortable-looking car. Michael’s into large equipment, smiles Robin, and the mower is useful when you’ve got 36 acres to care for.

The picture is completed by three successful offspring: Tineke, 29, a Lower Hutt surgeon. She was born in London while ­Fancourt was completing her specialist paediatrics training: “She’s very like my husband and will be a wonderful surgeon”. Sam, 27, a computer whiz in Sydney — “I get him to write down what he does but I still don’t understand it”. Nicholas, 21, who’s just finished his third year of medicine in Dunedin.

Fancourt was born in Dunedin but lived in New Plymouth from age four. Her parents were Doris and Denis Allen — the latter a pathologist who had two radiologist brothers Peter and Chalmers. All three Allens practised in New Plymouth. She has a brother Matthew Allen, a GP in New Plymouth and a sister in Melbourne.

Robin and Michael met at Otago School of Medicine and married in 1968. They’ve lived in Christchurch, the West Indies, England, Soweto and spent eight years in Blenheim before the move to Taranaki. It was in Blenheim that Fancourt established her first paediatrics practice and where she first realised how little understanding there is, even among doctors, “of how disastrous being traumatised at home can be. A lot of the time [doctors] don’t do anything about it.” She decided to devote her life to doing something herself.

So. A life filled with good. Even before mentioning the Brainwave Trust, the charity with the baby brain gain message which Fancourt helped set up.

But first the tiredness, the walking stick with steadying little sucker pads which helped her to the door, the short-term memory lapses, the irony. The woman who brought the brainwave message — and its American messiah Bruce Perry — to New Zealand has a brain tumour. And after a 16-year nodding acquaintance the oligodendroglioma, the kraken located in the frontal lobe area just behind her forehead, has wakened with a vengeance.

Characteristically, she’s fought it: “Sixteen years ago they told me I had four years to live. I thought, my God, I’m not doing that! I’m going to live. I had my children to think of!” She had chemo and radiotherapy but it was the “spiritual decision” to keep on living which fended off the slow-growing mass, she says.

“This re-emergence of this bloody tumour! I started getting tired and having problems with my leg and went along to a specialist who looked at my MRI scan and said there’s nothing we can do here. I was so furious. I came home, looked it up on the internet and got in touch with John Laterra [professor of neurology, oncology and neuroscience at Johns Hopkins Hospital] in Baltimore. He’s been wonderful.”

On Laterra’s advice another course of chemotherapy was begun which improved Fancourt’s memory and handwriting, but when her walking deteriorated the medication had to be stopped.

How did she first discover the tumour? “We’d just moved into this house and I had been feeling tired and stressed.” She attributed the energy shortfall to overload — a combination of her clinical practice, hospital work, expert witness work in court, looking after three children and the move. One day, while in a colleague’s office, she had a single grand mal seizure — a common way for this type of tumour to announce its presence. She’s never had one since and has not been held up in her work until two years ago.

Now the tumour is sucking energy from this once vivacious woman — whom fellow Brainwave Trust founder member Ian Hassall describes as “always everywhere, committed and involved”. It’s eating away her life’s passion.

Fancourt has been told by medical and legal advisors that she cannot continue her work with children. “Getting alongside them, understanding what’s in their lives, getting into their minds and helping them. I’ve just loved being involved with children but I can’t for the time being.”

For a woman who has no trouble pronouncing ­oligodendroglioma, and until now no trouble living with one, this is frustrating beyond endurance. “I have to find a way of reaching out to these children and helping them reach their potential. Having had all that taken away I feel impotent.”

There is still so much she wants to do to help spread the Brainwaveword. Everyone, she says, needs to know why we must put much more effort and funding into early childhood in this country. Why addressing our appalling child abuse record is so urgent.

The trust was seeded in 1996. That year, amid work pressures and the stream of troubled children coming through her clinic, Robin Fancourt “fell in love”. Her face radiates joy when she recalls this experience. She read a paper by American Bruce Perry, a pioneer in an underfunded and understudied area of medical research: childhood brain development.

During the 1990s while he was chief of psychiatry at Texas Children’s Hospital, Perry, a softspoken father of five from ­Bismarck, North Dakota, was conducting groundbreaking research using brain imaging techniques which showed how neural systems react when a child undergoes a traumatic experience. Perry’s work proved that trauma and neglect profoundly alter the biology of a child’s brain and have lifelong negative consequences. More than that, he established that the fleeting birth to three-year-old period is crucial for the shaping of a baby’s brain. By age three it’s 85 per cent wired.

Perry’s paper opened a door for Robin Fancourt. “I’d been giving lectures and presentations to lots of people, including my own profession. I was telling them how children get damaged and they weren’t taking any notice. That really, really made me mad. I put as much money as I could together and went to Houston to meet him. I thought I’d meet an old man in a pinstripe suit and he’d be really difficult. Instead he was this lovely young man, relaxed, charming who could explain so well how a parent’s disordered behaviour impacts on their children and what to do about it.”

Fancourt spent several weeks with Perry, learning how the infant brain grows and watching him work with disturbed children who came to his paediatric service — going through assessment and family history, deciding what to do and getting the parents involved.

“Then I came back and started talking about it to anyone who would listen. Luckily I was CEO of a congress we had in Auckland in 1998. I got Bruce Perry out. He did this wonderful Powerpoint presentation. They understood what he was saying and what I had been saying and they agreed and wanted to do something about it.”

Ian Hassall, Commissioner for Children from 1989 to 1994 and now a senior researcher at Auckland University of Technology’sInstitute of Public Policy, helped run the September 1998 12th International Congress on Child Abuse and Neglect. It was big — there were 1400 people there — and the charismatic Bruce Perry was, attests Hassall, “by far the most popular presenter”.

The congress organisers — Fancourt, Hassall and news ­presenter Judy Bailey — wanted to continue the Perry momentum and do something for the neglected area of early child development. Using a small amount of money left over from the conference they formed the charitable trust.

Judy Bailey was founding chair. She was replaced by Auckland-based freelance documentary maker Sue Younger in February 2004. Trust patron is former principal Youth Court judge MichaelBrown and there is a team of nine presenters (including teachers, paediatricians, lawyers and GPs) who take the message about early brain development round the country.

Presenter manager and trainer Ola Roberts says bookings for seminars have grown exponentially, from one or two a month in 2002 to around 20 a month in 2004. As the trust has no advertising budget she attributes the increase in requests to “word of mouth” publicity. Roberts recruits and trains speakers to try to meet the demand and is keen to help organisations find ways of incorporating the brainwave information into their existing education or training programmes.

Before her tumour began to affect her speech and walking, Fancourt was the trust’s star presenter. Her last official public presentation was in 2003. She wrote Brainy Babies for the parents who came up to her after her talks wanting to know more. Fancourt says she is annoyed the committee “don’t trust me to give another presentation on their behalf” — but annoyance is sometimes a disguise for grief. Her keynote speaker role is being taken by Simon Rowley a neonatal paediatrician at National Women’s Hospital.

Ola Roberts says there is no suggestion Fancourt is being replaced — “Robin is the Brainwave Trust!”

 To normal, loving parents the Brainwave message isn’t rocket science. What’s news about smiling, chatting, rocking, singing to your baby and tending to its every need? Hasn’t every good parent since the dawn of time done this automatically? Yes, but few know why it’s so important, what the physiological changes are that their actions are causing in their child’s brain and how short the period of time is when these changes happen. “We need ways of telling parents what they are doing, how wonderful it is and why they need to do more of it,” says Fancourt.

The Brainwave message is the opposite of what people used to be told about the brain: that a child’s brain is fully formed at birth;that brain development is driven by genes, not environment; that early experiences don’t have much impact on a person’s abilities in later life; that children’s brains are not as active as adults’.

Here’s what Fancourt says in Brainy Babies: “It is the day-to- day experiences of babies, infants and toddlers that orchestrate the development of their brains. If infants are raised in a safe, nurturing environment, their brains will be stimulated by these experiences, which spark brain cells into action and wire the crucial connections between them. The critical timing for this occurs between conception to age six, with most progress being made in the first three years.

“Talking, singing, reading to children, encouraging and ­endorsing their emerging skills, caressing, cuddling and playing with them are some of the ingredients required to build their brains. The power of these simple experiences can be seen in babies and infants who shine with an eager curiosity and a delight in life.”In short the baby play which comes so naturally to clucky adults — the goofy toe-tickling and funny face pulling we find ourselves doing when babies and children are around — is actuallydeveloping their brains, causing billions of brain cells (neurones) to connect.

Plus all the loving and nurturing of course. The vital twin abilities to form attachments to and empathise with others are brokered by the brain much earlier than you’d think. The process begins at birth with the mother’s warm responsive attention. Of the flood of sensory experiences the baby receives, positive physical touch — the “mother of all senses” — is the most vital. The neurone connections that occur with an attachment relationship need to be made within the first 18 months before this window of opportunity is lost.

In her book Fancourt explains that fruit flies have 100,000 neurones, mice have five million, a monkey has 10 billion but humans have 100 billion and most of the work connecting them is done intuitively by parents before their child is three.

It’s not hard work stuff like holding up flash cards with the word MUMMY printed in huge letters to try and get them reading at 10 months (remember Glenn Doman?). Yours truly was guilty of this, but to the credit of my eldest daughter, Patricia, she just turned her head away in disgust and I was too busy to try it with second daughter Lydia.

It’s not hiring a maths tutor when they’re still in nappies but instead playing This Little Piggy, chatting to them while going round the supermarket and doing hand-clapping games. It’s not giving them a tennis racquet as soon as they can walk — it’s getting alongside and encouraging them as they explore and learn in their own time. It’s keeping them warm, safe, fed and happy and picking them up every time they cry. Every time? Here’s Fancourt on this:

“Most parents want their children to be able to deal with the stresses of daily life and recover from any devastating experience. Most parents do not know that the foundation of such resilience is determined by their first responses to their children as babies and infants. Leave him to cry so he can control himself? The answer is no. Quick, consistent and, over time, repeated attention to a baby’s cry builds in a flexible regulating capacity to future stress and as the child grows, an ability to soothe himself.”

The physiology behind this is simple. Persistently high levels of cortisol — the hormone released when the baby is stressed — interfere with the metabolism, the immune system and affect the forming brain. Picking up a crying baby regulates cortisol production and allows his or her brain to go back to growing.

But society frowns upon mollycoddling. Lots of people will try and dissuade the unsure new parent from picking up and comforting their baby. In my case the unmarried, childless nursery nurse at North Shore Hospital, who had worked there 30 years and felt she knew about child rearing, ticked me off when I scooped my wailing babe out of the plastic hospital crib: “You’re making a rod for your own back!” she growled. And another “expert”, Barry the builder, who fixed up our old wooden house intermittently through our happy nappy, picture book and playdough years used to put his head through whichever bit of broken wall he was recladding and say: “You’re ruining those kids.”

I ignored them both and am thrilled to hear, 27 years later, the brainy lady herself telling me my kids were lucky that I did.

What happens to babies and children whose brains don’t get this natural, crucial, urgent input?

Fancourt, in her sunny room with the glorious view, sets her coffee cup down carefully and summons up hundreds of sad, vacant little faces which line the tunnel of her years in practice. She cannot tell their tales quite as crisply as she once could but her frustration and grief over child abuse and our failure to respond urgently to it — and protect the rapidly developing infant brain — is undiminished.

“A lot of these children are assessed as ‘Oh don’t worry, it’s just developmental delay. It will take a while.’ But their brains are developing so fast that to delay means you are losing months of development.

“What [the abused child’s] brain is doing is adapting to the situation they are in at home. They are constantly watching for the next violent episode. They switch off the cerebral cortex, they can’t think or listen or do anything normal. They have no ability to make social contacts. They are totally in this area all the time, watching for non-verbal clues. It might be the sound of a father’s voice when he comes home drunk, knowing that means he will attack their mother. Or just a certain look which means a bashing. The child’s mind is focussed solely on this and on fear and danger. They cannot participate in life.”

Much of this early damage is irreparable but Fancourt says “there is always room for hope. It’s difficult but it can be done.”

She tells the story of A, a half-Polynesian, half-Pakeha New Plymouth five-year-old, son of a solo mother, who was referred to her with Attention Deficit Hyperactivty Disorder (ADHD) in the 1990s.

When A and his mother came to see Fancourt the boy was unresponsive, withdrawn and did not seem to be listening. His mother reported he was always negative towards her and at times violent. A’s father had left the household when he was 4½ and A had refused to go and see him since. The marriage was intermittently violent from the start. When the father came home drunk A’s mother knew she would be attacked and beaten that night. A knew this too and would withdraw to his room and refuse to eat.

A’s mother found his inattention and refusal to co-operate increasingly frustrating. A would lash out for no particular reason. She tried smacking him, telling him what she thought of these behaviours and isolating him in his bedroom but these tactics made him worse. Medication for ADHD had not helped. To give herself space A’s mother left him to watch television as soon as he was home from school.

A was thin and had a slightly raised pulse and respiratory rate. Fancourt knew that although he seemed not to be listening he was concentrating on what his mother might do — the crucial sign being “an absent look in his eyes”. His teacher reported similar behaviour. Her remedy was to place him at the back of the classroom so as to minimise his disruption of the other children’s learning.

Although A was never physically abused Fancourt ­recognised the classic signs of a child who has suffered trauma in early life. His need to maintain constant vigilance for unspoken danger signals meant his brain’s cerebral cortex was switched off. He had no normal sense of time, was withdrawn and his emotional and cognitive development were arrested.

When Fancourt explained what was happening A’s mother was relieved and ready to do whatever she could to help him recover. So was his teacher. A needed the care, nurture and guidance he had missed out on earlier. Fancourt told his mother that gentle and reassuring touch was important. Also verbal praise and encouragement — which most parents use without thinking.

Consistency of care was vital for A, says Fancourt. If his mother failed to pick him up from school it resulted in “a catastrophic feeling of despair and regression in his feelings for his mother”. Forewarning of being picked up by someone he knew was the way round this, as was forewarning of a change of school routine by his teacher. A class outing caused A terror not excitement.

Consistency at bedtime with story reading, learning to treat his mother with respect, punishment mutually agreed and not in the form of physical harm or verbal denigration, television banned, especially violent programmes — “Children learn through interaction with other human beings, not sitting in front of a TV.”

With Fancourt’s guidance A and his mother worked things out together. Within months of meeting him Fancourt explained to A “how consistency and care by a child’s parents literally grow his brain”. At the time she could not tell if he took this in but in later years he asked questions and used the information to explain things to his friends. A is in his teens now and doing well. And has already spread the Brainwave message.  

Brain development in children is both spectacular and fascinating. Fancourt says most parents, when they learn the easy things they can do to help their baby’s brain grow, are filled with excitement.

A newborn baby’s brain is two-thirds the size of an adult’s and contains almost all the cells it will ever have. The baby’s daily experiences etch the patterns of permanent pathways in the brain linking billions of brain cells together.

By the age of eight months a baby has 500 trillion connections. By the age of two a toddler has 1000 trillion — twice as many as its parents. By three the brain is two and a half times more active than an adult’s and remains so for the first 10 years of life. Small children are biologically primed for learning yet the tragic irony is we spend less on early childhood education than at any other time of life.

New Zealand is third on a list of 27 OECD nations for child homicide and Child, Youth and Family has a backlog of more than 5000 cases — children whose brain development and personalities are imperilled by lethal delays.

CYF, says Fancourt “is a mess and needs more resources and more knowledge. It’s been a while since I talked to politicians and policy makers but when I did they were fascinated by what I was telling them and knew it was important. But they did not do anything. They have a three-year term and want things done which will put them back in office.

“We need more money and resources for early childhood. If you plot out what’s spent on early childhood, primary education and what’s spent later in life it’s astronomically different. Little children are way down there. We should be looking at why. We should be focussing on what’s important. Because [early childhood] is when you’re establishing who you’re going to be.

“If every in the country knew how important these first few years of life are we could do things differently. Brainwave is trying to tell people exactly what is going on. Things can change.”

an Hassall checks his diary and confirms the meeting with the government Fancourt is referring to took place on February 21 2001. Fancourt, Hassall and trust member and tireless child advocate Lesley Max met then finance minister Michael Cullen, minister of social policy Steve Maharey, health minister Annette King and justice minister Phil Goff, explained the trust’s message and “apprised them that there was a whole lot that could be gained in this country by attending to the development of young children”. Government published a policy document, Agenda For Children, in 2002, but since then, reports Hassall, not much action.

It seems it rests with the little trust and its bare bones budget — between $60,000 and $100,000 depending on donations and fundraising — to keep spreading the word and trying to “reach the marginalised people who have great difficulty rearing their children”. Can a group of middle-class professionals who fit the work in when and where they can, do this?

In the long-term, says Hassall, yes: “You have to be both impatient and patient. You have to believe that each time you make a major effort to do something it does have an impact and it’s incremental.” The information is being diffused through presenters talking to groups, who engage with parents, who in turn pass it on.

Cathy James says it won’t reach her daughter — the 30-year-old solo mother whose three children James is raising — but Brainwave is helping James herself repair the damage her daughter has done. She wishes more people dealing with children knew about the trust’s work.

Two years ago James, 48, left her partner and country life in northern Victoria to return to New Zealand and become a second time parent in a messy, toy-filled house in Massey, west Auckland. The house has mattresses and junk in the front yard (there’s an explanation), walls covered in times table posters, bright fabric hangings, animal charts and children’s artworks, two much-bounced-on shabby sofas, bikes, a plastic paddling pool with a shade cover on a sunny deck and a computer humming in a corner.

It’s a cosy home, kindy, classroom, kitchen, office and refuge combined, presided over by the motherly-bosomed James who, while her youngest
grandchild naps, is combining painting one of the rooms bright blue with supervising a sweet-natured seven-year-old’s handwriting practice.

We can’t give James’ three ­grandchildren their correct names because after two years and $25,000 in legal fees their grandma is still
fighting custody issues in the Family Court. We’ll call them Richie, seven, Jimmy, five and Ellie, three.

New Zealand-born James has four daughters but only one went off the rails — at around puberty. Her daughter is an alcoholic and methamphetamine addict who abused drugs and alcohol through three pregnancies to three different fathers and who has refused all ­remedial help. All three children suffered developmental damage as a consequence.

James’ whole life is now focussed on helping the children catch up on some of what they’ve missed. Affection, stability and consistency came first.

Richie was five when James gained custody but, with no normal parenting input during his early childhood, he had the mental age of an 18-month-old. He has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and Asperger’s syndrome — mild autism. He cannot make eye contact, dislikes exercise (one way his Nana Cath gets him moving is to go round the streets collecting other people’s inorganic rubbish — hence the piles in the yard) and does not respond to instructions the way most children do. His morning get-up and get ready for school routine is set out on a photographic chart on the wall behind the front door.

At first James, a trained social worker specialising in helping people with disabilities, focussed on cuddling and touch