The mayor of Wairoa is calling on the Government and community organisations to help the town care for some of its most vulnerable people. Since Cyclone Gabrielle, closures to a rest home, including a dementia unit, and a residential care home for people with intellectual disabilities, has seen people sent away for care.
But mayor Craig Little says Wairoa is their home, Wairoa loves them, and it’s crucial those forced away be supported to return. John Campbell reports.
Gavin Jones has lived in Wairoa all his life.
Some of us may regard that as limiting, as a small place to spend a lifetime, but for the 69-year-old it has meant the kind of freedom a person with Gavin’s intellectual and learning disabilities might not always have. The freedom to walk out the door of his home and feel safe.
The freedom to not be misunderstood by strangers. The freedom that comes when almost everybody knows you, and cares for you, and, if you get distressed, can get you home.
When the world is very big and not always welcoming, and when you’re not able to navigate the new, Wairoa can be a wonderful home.
Following Cyclone Gabrielle, after Wairoa was flooded, first by water and then by dust, when the town that lies half-way between Gisborne and Napier was without power, communications and road access, Gavin was one of the vulnerable people moved out.
He’s in Rotorua now, where he can’t go walking unaccompanied, where he does not know his neighbours, or the local shopkeepers, or the people who crew the fire engines he loves so much.
He’s in a bigger centre, yes, but his life is so much smaller now, and Gavin desperately wants to go home.
John Campbell meets Gavin, who is desperate to return to Wairoa – a town he loves and where he is loved and cared for – after he was moved to Rotorua following Cyclone Gabrielle. (Source: 1News)
And here’s the thing that makes you understand why people value small communities so greatly - the people of Wairoa desperately want Gavin back.
A betrayal of Gavin's vulnerability
Wairoa’s mayor is Craig Little.
We meet him at Gavin’s (former) home on Kabul Street. The property is run by IDEA Services, the country’s “largest provider of services for people with intellectual disabilities”, 100% owned by IHC New Zealand.
IDEA Services proudly speaks of enabling “people with intellectual disabilities to enjoy great lives as part of their communities.” And Gavin did. Gavin was a poster boy for exactly that.
But not since February.
Little says he’s contacted IDEA Services to find out when Gavin’s coming home. He worries that Gavin’s absence is a betrayal of Gavin’s vulnerability and Gavin’s trust in the community. If Gavin can’t speak for himself, his mayor is speaking for him.
“You know.” he tells me, “we’re quite a cool town, in that we actually like each other, and that love, or manaakitanga, is not happening here.
"It’s as simple as that.”
It wasn’t Little who first raised the alarm about Gavin’s continuing absence. It was Ian Gemmel.
Gemmell has known Gavin his whole life.
And when Gavin didn’t return to the IDEA Services property on Kabul Street, Gemmell wrote a letter to the Wairoa Star.
Suddenly, there was a community outpouring: “Where are you Gavin?” “We miss you Gavin!” “Come home soon!”
But Gavin hasn’t come home.
His friends in the local shops are not being visited. He is not standing, in his yellow coat, outside the fire station. He is not delightedly yelling out to people as he passes them in the street. He is not filling Wairoa with his high-volume love of Wairoa.
Little worries that IDEA Services may have used the flooding to get people out of a facility that was becoming increasingly difficult to run.
'We are working alongside Gavin and his family'
IDEA Services emphatically rejects that.
“On 20 February, we airlifted the five people we support in Wairoa following the devastating floods to neighbouring cities.”
IDEA Services Regional Manager Lianne Bryers said “IDEA Services has a very small service in Wairoa, and our priority at the time was to ensure ongoing and safe service – where we were unable to speak to these people for five days because the phones and internet were down and our staffing levels were critical”.
“Two people we support have since decided they wish to continue living where they are now in Tauranga. We respect their wishes and are continuing to provide their support. We are continuing to talk to the other three people we support, their families and whaikaha about what the options might be.”
“In particular, we know that two of our residents, including Gavin, would like to return to Wairoa. Right now, we are working alongside Gavin and his family, and local community providers/services to see how this might work.”
He wants to go home
Gavin doesn’t want to be worked alongside. He just wants to be taken home.
We meet him in Rotorua, where he is selling Anzac poppies outside Mitre 10. He is wearing his beloved New Zealand Fire Service jacket and his grandfather’s WW1 medals.
“Hello Gavin”, I say. “My name’s John.”
“MATE! JOHN!”
And then Gavin says, very loudly indeed: “GOOD TO SEE YOU, YOU OLD BUGGER. HOW ARE YOU, MATE?”
And then he repeats, as if trying the word out to see what it’s like, or because I am new to him and this a kind of discovery: “JOHN!”
Every time I ask Gavin about Wairoa, he cries.
“I wanna go home, mate. You know what I mean? Mate. Take me home.” And then the tears come.
His sister Roseann Johnston tells my colleague Henry McMullen, who has gone to see her in Napier, that “he cries a lot on the phone”.
Johnston understands why.
When Gavin was diagnosed with heart disease, she hoped he might come and live with her in Napier.
No.
“He’s hardly ever been away. When we grew up we only went to Gisborne for holidays. He’s probably only been to Wellington once and Gisborne on holiday and Taupō to see family friends and nowhere else.”
In 69 years, Gavin has probably never left the North Island. But Wairoa is enough.
“Take me home, mate.”
Something big at stake
Little says something big is at stake here. That Gavin has to come home.
If people in smaller communities like Wairoa are able to be removed from their home, without consent, against their will and understanding, placed somewhere a four-hour drive away where they are lonely, confused and unhappy, and not returned, even when the flood (that did not damage their building) has gone, what an abandonment of kindness and whānau and duty that appears to be.
Or is it simply that these are strange and testing times?
“IDEA Services is not unique,” it tells us. “Throughout the area damaged by the cyclone, communities and individuals are displaced and trying to get back on their feet and community, and government organisations are working together to support this.”
But are they? In Wairoa?
Or is a kind of abandonment taking place?
After we leave Kabul Street, the mayor takes us to Glengarry Lifecare, a “rest home” that also offers (or, offered) day care, respite care and dementia care.
Glengarry is located on the other side of Wairoa, across the river from Gavin’s former home.
Unlike Gavin’s home, Glengarry was flooded. Badly. In one of the rooms, a day calendar still declares “February 14 Tuesday”. That was the terrible day the water came and everybody left.
But 10 weeks later Little is, again, frustrated that there’s no obvious sign of anyone returning. Or of the work starting that would enable that to happen.
“It's just heartbreaking,” he says. “You know? People have the right to live in their communities until their last days.”
Do they?
Or is that a right you only enjoy if you live in places larger than Wairoa?
And if we agree the latter is the case, will anyone who can afford to leave remain in these communities as they get old?
Or will a permanent diminution take place?
'The Government needs to act'
Glengarry is owned by Heritage Lifecare, and their chief is Norah Barlow.
Norah Barlow emails us a long statement that contains the following paragraph:
“Aged care funding provided by the Government has been an increasing issue for rural communities. Last year, Heritage was forced to reduce hospital care services in Wairoa due to chronic nursing shortages. The cyclone has highlighted further the difficulty aged care is facing due to inadequate funding and nursing shortages. The Government needs to act now to support communities like Wairoa," Barlow says.
“It is vitally important that locations away from the main centres are not forgotten and receive the funding for aged care services they deserve.”
Is Wairoa, population 9000, suddenly too small and remote for that kind of funding?
“Take me home, mate,” Gavin says. To everyone he sees.
In Rotorua, Gavin’s RSA friends are doing their best to look after him. Their kindness is a wonderful thing.
But it’s Gavin’s ability to look after himself that has been curtailed. Wairoa was his domain. His happiness lay in his freedom. In the vast gift of being able to be himself.
Little tells me he remembers the happy day when the Kabul Street property was opened, roughly 15 years ago. It felt like a corner was being turned.
“They’d got a place to call home. They could truly live amongst us. With us. And that’s not happening at the moment.”
Little phoned Gavin in Rotorua. “And he broke down, he broke down. He said, 'Oh my God. Mayor Craig, is that you Craig? I don't wanna be here, I wanna go. I wanna get out of here."
On Anzac Day, Little and Gavin usually place a wreath at the Wairoa cenotaph together.
Lest we forget.
Is Gavin going home?
Is he?
And if he’s not, what larger decisions does that point to? In every community like Wairoa?
And who’s going to explain it to Gavin?
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