Wairarapa News 12/9/09

Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Wairarapa branch vice chairman Merv Archer and branch regional co-ordinator Wendy Archer, who have legal guardianship of their great granddaughter, Lily, 3.

 

Lily Archer turns five next year. There will be gifts and games and a big celebration.

Her great-grandfather Merv Archer, 75, shares custody of Lily at a rented home in Masterton alongside wife, Wendy, 68.

He is unsure if he will make the party.

Their pensioner household will not bear an extravagant birthday for Lily until next year and Merv was diagnosed with cancer a fortnight ago after surviving a heart attack four years earlier.

"This is all about Lily and giving her a childhood like any other - even if I'm not around to see it," he said.

The couple won custody of Lily when she was three months old, Merv said.

Lily's mother, their granddaughter, did not contest guardianship and has not made contact for two years.

Merv is the Wairarapa branch vice chairman of Grandparents Raising Grandchildren and Wendy is co-ordinator for the regional organisation, which was founded four years ago.

Lives similar to their own are being led by at least 32 other "retread" parents and fellow GRG members now raising more than 40 grandchildren or great-children in Wairarapa, he said.

Things are "hard all over" when you're raising children on a pension, he said, and ill health is stalking your otherwise golden years.

Merv and Wendy were only weeks in to their retirement when Lily arrived at the doorstep and cut short their plans to manage motels while travelling New Zealand.

Wendy said Child Youth and Family, which makes supplementary funding available to foster parents but not them, has financially frustrated the pension-dependent family ever since.

She said the raising of the Unsupported Child Benefit in April to the same base weekly payment made to foster parents, is a move in the right direction.

Today the couple are scrambling to keep Lily in a nearby Montessori school that a judge ordered CYF to pay in February.

"Lily is thriving there and pulling her out is an absolute last resort. I'm not sure how long the school can wait but the crunch is coming if CYF don't do what they've been told."

Wendy however finds for her "the worst part" is the social desert retread parents are forced to wander.

"The fact is you lose all your friends. You can't do this or that because you're stuck with a child," she said.

"We do meet young people when we take Lily swimming, or to the library, or dancing but we don't socialise because they're 40 years younger than us."

Wendy is now organising a January summer camp for GRG members and their children after an earlier group outing to Greytown.

She said Trust House this year shone a light for the group with a more than $1000 grant and Community Foodbanks have likewise helped with the occasional emergency food parcel.

Social worker Jill Worrall this week released a survey report she compiled over five years on grandparents and extended family raising kin children.

The report will be presented next month at the inaugural Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Trust national conference in Auckland during Grandparents Week.

The report revealed that 22 percent of the 205 respondents have a total family income of less than $20,000 a year and 25 percent less than $30,000.

"Deterioration in their own health as they advance in years, expensive legal wrangles to maintain custody and a need for family were expressed, along with a need for better and affordable housing, assistance with education costs and clothing in many cases," she said.

GRG Trust founder Diane Vivian said kin carers would remain unfairly burdened as long as they are barred from ancillary benefits for clothing, health and medical and education costs.

"Many grandparents still face extreme hardship meeting the costs associated with caring for children who need ongoing specialist medical, therapeutic or educational help as a result of the abuse and trauma they suffered before their grandparents stepped in to care for them," she said.

Merv agrees that parity between kin carers and foster parents must be established although his health today is foremost for himself and Wendy.

He said some close friends have been told he has cancer and a secondary test in December will determine "just how bad it is".

Lily need not know, he said, and whatever the test outcome her big party will still go ahead.

"Old friends have asked if there's any resentment about being parents again. There's no real end result this time but we've had Lily four years now and that's what we do, we don't resent it," Merv said.

"I couldn't imagine living without Lily."

People his own age have also asked how he stays upbeat when the chips are down, he said.

"I tell them to wake up to themselves, and get a four-year-old."

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