Mind that child
Sweeping restructuring at Plunket is radically changing the 111-year-old organisation so it can focus more on the needs of the wider community. But not everyone is happy about the changes, least of all its volunteers.
Sweeping restructuring at Plunket is radically changing the 111-year-old organisation so it can focus more on the needs of the wider community. But not everyone is happy about the changes.
Amother pushes a buggy fitted with a plastic rain shield out of the gates of Plunket’s crèche on Wellington’s Karori Rd. It’s pick-up time in one of the country’s biggest suburbs, and the weather is bleak: grey and drizzling. Vanessa Kirkham flicks the windscreen wipers on and off, waiting for 1.30pm when she will collect two-year-old son Jackson. For two mornings a week, Jackson comes to the crèche high on Wellington’s hills. His sister, Lily, who is almost five, also came to this crèche before she went to kindergarten.
The gloomy weather reflects Kirkham’s mood. On a Friday in early March, 35 crèche families received an email that shocked them: Plunket was to close the centre in seven weeks, saying it could see no future for the facility. It was also transferring the rooms that had been built – on gifted land – by locals in the 1940s to head office.
Kirkham, a member of the crèche committee, and other parents revolted, called in lawyers and demanded an explanation. “The way it was handled was quite appalling,” she says.
The closure is now out for community consultation, but Plunket’s plans in Karori are part of sweeping restructuring that will radically change the charity that was set up by Dr Truby King 111 years ago. Plunket’s controversial strategy, which covers 2016 to 2021, is titled, “The journey towards generational change”. Six months into being a national organisation, Plunket is also under fire over its head-office spending: specifically, in the past financial year, 11 senior managers were each paid more than $180,000, almost $2 million was spent on consultants and $1.4 million on marketing.
Most New Zealanders have been raised with their growth charts recorded in a Plunket book, and, more recently, electronically. Plunket sees at least 90% of all newborns, focusing on their first 1000 days of life.
It is a national organisation that does not discriminate. Even the Prime Minister’s baby, Neve Te Aroha, will be cared for by Plunket. Before Neve’s birth, Jacinda Ardern met her local Plunket nurse at a community morning tea, according to the PM’s spokeswoman.
In its strategy document, Plunket says that it intends to continue running its nursing service over the next 100 years, but the organisation needs to “adapt, collaborate and innovate”.
“We know that to truly make the difference of a lifetime, we need to work towards generational change,” it says in its plan to make Plunket “a modern, relevant and responsive organisation”.
It adds that family, whānau and communities are changing. The organisation’s funders are looking for measurable outcomes, and a greater return on investment. Royal New Zealand Plunket Trust chairwoman Christine Lake says a single, cohesive national organisation is critical to the organisation’s future.
The bit that troubles some communities is that, as part of this restructuring, Plunket shifted from an area-board model – boards overseeing hundreds of different branches manned by armies of volunteers – to a national charitable trust. Branches have been dissolved as part of this move to head office.
Plunket also began transferring assets from communities to its head office on
“We know that to truly make the difference of a lifetime, we need to work towards generational change.”
Wellington’s Mercer St: $52 million in assets and bank accounts over two years. However, local groups argue the properties and land don’t belong to Plunket, as in some cases they were gifted, and communities fundraised to build or maintain them.
A handful of vocal communities are outraged at what they call an “asset grab”: those in Karori, Upper Hutt, Waikato, Greymouth, and also in Culverden and Wairau, in Canterbury.
Since her daughter Lily began at Karori’s Plunket crèche three years ago, Kirkham has spent countless hours fundraising for $50,000 that was earmarked for the Plunket building renovation. When the branch was dissolved and the assets were transferred, head office also took control of their bank account.
Says Kirkham: “It’s understandable that Plunket wanted to get some national focus on this, but it’s totally unacceptable to be
In the past financial year, 11 senior managers were paid more than $180,000.
going behind the backs of volunteers.”
Rachael Skilton, whose child is about to start at the crèche, found head office was in breach of its trust deed, as the Plunket committee wasn’t consulted. Karori parents got in the lawyers. With the backing of MPs Nicola Willis and Grant Robertson, a petition signed by 3000 locals forced Plunket to put the crèche’s future out for consultation, leaving the service open for two terms.
“We tried to stop this. We did some searching and it wasn’t difficult to come across other communities where this had happened,” Skilton says.
She says Karori’s Plunket land was donated in the 1940s, and locals fundraised to build the rooms. Over the years, volunteers have staged cake stalls and other community fundraising efforts to collect $50,000 that they set aside to renovate the building.
Plunket argued that the crèche accommodated only 14 children a session and the rooms were no longer suitable without renovation, so the service was no longer viable.
Skilton, a communications consultant, pulls out financial reports from Plunket’s website. “This is a major asset grab. Plunket is a fully funded organisation. What are they doing with all that money?
“Plunket seems to have drifted far from the values of its founders. The families and children out there seem to be paying a high price for what could be Plunket’s bloated corporate office,” says Skilton.
Karori’s Plunket parents are concerned about the wider picture: that the organisation’s logic is that other areas need services, too, which those local areas don’t have the volunteers or the fundraising to meet. However, they argue that Karori Plunket needs every cent the locals have raised. “Karori is hardly affluent,” says Skilton. “At the crèche, we have 19 different nationalities, parents working full-time, and Plunket doesn’t understand our community. We don’t begrudge anyone who needs these services.
“Plunket has a basis of really hardworking parents and volunteers and it seems to be simply disregarding that. It’s wanting to bulldoze through that in order to reach some plan that has been thought of at head office.”
LOCAL OWNERSHIP
In the mid-1950s, Minnie and Sam Maxwell gave a block of land to the Hurunui branch of Plunket for new rooms in Culverden in north Canterbury. Locals then fundraised to build the facilities, which opened in 1959.
The same generosity has occurred in other communities. In a letter to Culverden Plunket, the couple’s four children – Judy Green, Anne Beaven, Jim and Bruce Maxwell – argued that their parents would want Plunket to stay in local ownership, as it had been maintained by local fundraising over the years. They wrote: “It would be a shame if control of the land and building is now lost to the Culverden community.”
However, that happened in 2014, when the titles were transferred to Plunket’s Canterbury area board and, more recently, to head office.
Brona Youngman, the former president of Culverden Plunket, fought to keep the rooms in local ownership, bringing in lawyers. About $15,000 in the branch bank
account also disappeared and was sent to head office. “We have been told we need to apply if we require any money. In most cases, this money had been sitting there for when we needed it. We have now lost all control of that money and we are told to
Greymouth volunteers lost access to $80,000 they raised, and $25,000 for a Pirongia playground went to head office.
fundraise if we need anything.”
With children aged four and two and another on the way, she is fed up with Plunket and won’t be volunteering again. “I can’t believe the bureaucracy has come in.”
In Greymouth, Plunket volunteers argue they raised $80,000 they couldn’t access, resigning in protest. In Pirongia, locals raised $25,000 for a playground. The money went to head office and locals said if they didn’t get their playground, they’d seek legal advice. Plunket recently confirmed the playground will now go ahead, as it was a tagged project.
In Upper Hutt – where one former committee member told the Listener she won’t have anything more to do with Plunket – Pak’nSave sponsored the Plunket rooms.
Says Plunket chief executive Amanda Malu: “I find this an interesting issue to discuss. The buildings remain in Upper Hutt or where they were. The purpose they were fundraised for was for Plunket and that hasn’t changed. The ownership is still in the name of Plunket, we just have a different governance structure. I understand that local enthusiasm and the fundraising efforts that have been made in local areas, and we totally respect that. But, honestly, it is just going to take time for people to understand and adjust to the new structure.”
In 2007, at the time of Plunket’s centenary, about 10,000 volunteers fundraised. Over the past 11 years, the numbers have fallen away, and the organisation’s head office now has about 1400 volunteers registered in its online portal.
The fear among critics is that Plunket now risks losing grassroots support, and being seen as a faceless bureaucracy in Wellington’s CBD.
The head office is on the third floor of a high rise in central Wellington. In the reception area, two oversized powderblue Plunket teddies dominate a couple of couches. Malu and other head office managers address the Plunket community from these couches, posting videos on Plunket’s website.
Of Ngāi Tahu descent, Malu has been with Plunket since 2014, when she took on the role of chief marketing officer. The decision to restructure into a national organisation was made in November 2016. By June that year, some of the 18 areas had already dissolved – Northland, Waitematā, Counties Manukau, Waikato, Lakes, Manawatu, Wellington/Wairarapa, and West Coast, with their $17 million of assets. Malu, who became chief executive in September 2016, says some of those places had few volunteers and no board.
Says Malu: “In the past, the area society structure worked quite well. We had a good number of volunteers evenly spread, and people who were up for taking on the roles of president, being on a board, and so on. In 2014, we were starting to see some of the cracks beginning to appear. Some areas were struggling to get members and they couldn’t get people willing to be volunteers.”