Making a ‘real difference’
Plunket nurse Tracy Edwards says often they are the only ones going into babies’ homes.
Tracy Edwards looks across from a cafe to her workplace – a simple wooden building bearing the distinctive Plunket logo on Wellington’s Park Rd. A blue fence running around the property was fundraised for and built by Plunket volunteers.
For seven years, the mother of three has been a part-time Plunket nurse on the Miramars peninsula. Her job is a mixed bag. For every waterfront mansion or leafy villa she visits in Seatoun or Miramar, there’s a state house or rental in Strathmore that is cold or damp.
One of 380 Plunket nurses, Edwards is at the coalface, visiting newborn babies from four weeks old, and seeing them on and off until they are about two and a half years old. It’s a role she believes in strongly. She sips her drink and swallows her food quietly before she speaks. “I love the families and the communities I work with. You can make a real difference.
“Often we’re the only ones going into the homes. A social worker or Family Start worker may go in. But we get a real insight into these family’s lives.”
In May, Edwards made a submission to the Government’s select committee on child poverty, sharing some of the more difficult cases she has come across: a Syrian refugee family who lived in a house with mould on the ceiling, where the cooking extractor fan discharged into a wardrobe in the bedroom, and their baby had been admitted to hospital with bronchiolitis; a house so cold that Edwards was unable to unwrap the newborn baby to weigh it; a Samoan family of five whose dinner was the fish the father caught off the peninsula; a Samoan family with an unflued gas heater as their only source of warmth, which they were too scared to use.
Along with weighing babies, the Plunket nurse has fought for heat pumps, helped rehouse families and put them in touch with the right agencies.
During each visit, she checks off a list from the Ministry of Health: antismoking, immunisations, safe sleeping, weight, length, hearing and vision checks.
One of the more common threats on her beat is that babies are often put to bed with their parents, raising the risk of Sudi (sudden unexpected death of infant). Not all parents are aware of the risks, and Edwards tries to find out why, and to let them know about safe sleeping, or to find a loan bassinet for those who need it.
“We do have a lot we cover. We don’t have the capacity for having more time dealing with social services. It needs to be a universal service, but some families need more intense support. At the moment, it’s a one-size-fitsall approach.
“I’ll go to a house in Karaka Bay and I’ll think, ‘Oh, I’d like to live here’, and then I’ll go to the Housing NZ flats and they’ll smell of urine and be full of broken glass. I’ve made the call to weigh babies with their clothes on, when there’s steam coming off your breath.”
Asked if she has ever felt in danger while advocating for babies, she says no, although she will sometimes call in other agencies, such as Oranga Tamariki – the Ministry for Children. “The vast majority of parents I see are keen to be the best parents they can be regardless of the difficult situations they may be in … There is no doubt that undue stress can have an adverse affect on all aspects of life, including parenting.”
Edwards has filled in a staff satisfaction survey organised by Plunket head office to gauge the pulse of the organisation since the restructure.
When Plunket was asked if it could release this to the Listener, a spokesperson said it was an internal document, not for public viewing. She says: “It came through clearly that our staff support our strategy and enjoy working at Plunket. We heard staff tell us they want to learn more about how Plunket’s strategy is going to be put into action, and we are working on that now.
“We also heard staff say they want some practical improvements to technology to make their jobs easier – and we’ve already made this a priority.”
“I’ve made the call to weigh babies clothed when there’s steam coming off [cold] breath.”
“The model wasn’t fit for purpose”, and there were growing inequities. Areas such as Rotorua and West Coast were without Plunket community services – co-ordinated coffee groups (like a dating service for new parents and their newborns), supported play groups, parenting workshops and support for new migrants, breastfeeding, sleep and post-natal depression.
Plunket nurses still visited babies and infants and ran clinics, but extra community services were hotchpotch, depending on where people lived.
Although reorganisation wasn’t universally welcomed, Malu says there was robust discussion and it was passed by a majority vote.
Last year, the assets and bank accounts began to be transferred. “Inheriting a property portfolio of 400 buildings is a bit of a mixed bag,” Malu says.
She seems reluctant to promise to keep current buildings. However, Plunket has pledged to consult communities if it wants to sell or change them, and it won’t spend proceeds on general operating costs.
“In some cases, we have buildings that are not fit for purpose. That could be everything from being in a community where the people are no longer drawn to, or where the families are not living now. We have to be where families can get to us. At the front and centre of all this is, what do families need from us?”
It’s only now that Plunket has a national view of what services are where and a better idea of the needs of families that it can finally spot gaps, says Malu. “It also gives us the opportunity to address inequity issues.”
She defends what critics say is a bloated head office, saying some senior managers took a pay cut to work for Plunket, and the spend on consultants and change managers can’t be done on the cheap. She says the near-doubling marketing budget last year was partly because of two new fundraising campaigns, and one-off expenses such as car seats for families in need.
The days of volunteers swinging buckets on street corners on a single day for Plunket are over. Plunket’s modernised approach is exemplified by its online “Raise a Bundle” campaign, where individuals and businesses can either make a donation or seek support for a cause to meet its $6 million fundraising goal.
On the site, amid fundraising pages from companies such as Z Energy and Vodafone, Malu has a fundraising page – each time she buys a coffee, she will match the price with a donation, and along with other gifts, she has so far raised $1000; chairwoman Lake has also collected $780 from her fundraising efforts.
DEPRIVED REGIONS
Last July, when Plunket took control of the assets of eight area boards, it beefed up its net assets by $27.05 million. The area board for Gisborne and Wairoa – one of the more deprived regions of the group – was one that it absorbed.
Real estate agent Wendy Reeves has lived in Gisborne for 28 years. A Plunket volunteer throughout that time, she joined the charity when she arrived from Italy as a solo mother with two young children.
Since she first stepped into the Plunket rooms with her sister-in-law, who was on the committee at the time, Reeves has been on the Plunket board. She was the branch president, and oversaw fundraising efforts.
She was never a keen baker, but she was proud of the baby-photo competition her branch ran every year, which helped bring in extra money to refurbish buildings and buy cars for the nurses. Raised by a mother who was a Karitane nurse, Reeves can’t say enough about the important role local Plunket nurses play in Gisborne.
“They are among the very few people who can go into homes where a mum is not on guard. If the social worker turns up, the neighbours see them going in. Plunket is a wraparound service.”
Reeves is reluctant to criticise the organisation she has given her heart and soul to over the years, but says this: “If something ain’t broke, don’t change it. I won’t say what I deeply feel, but I feel that they have unravelled a core part of Plunket’s soul.
“The head office corporate model doesn’t work for Plunket. Every individual area has its own needs.”
Although Reeves is still a volunteer, she is saddened that her local branch has dissolved. Will she fundraise? “I’ll never fundraise for an empty pool. Volunteers like to have a tangible goal and to work towards the start and finish of it.
“Plunket was set up by volunteers. Volunteers are the heart and soul of the organisation. They have disenfranchised the volunteers.”
In 2007, when Plunket held its centenary,
“If something ain’t broke, don’t change it … I feel that they have unravelled a core part of Plunket’s soul.”
Gisborne was one of 600 branches dotted around the country. In a book to mark the occasion, I Was a Plunket Baby: 100 years of the Royal New Zealand Plunket Society, author Jim Sullivan wrote: “One of Plunket’s greatest strengths has been its branch system. There is practically no town, suburb, village or country district which has not had, at some time, a Plunket branch or sub-branch.”
ADDITIONAL SERVICES
By the time of amalgamation, Gisborne was thriving, but Counties Manukau was not. If there are winners and losers in the restructuring story, South Auckland triumphs.
Rochelle Cave is the Plunket co-ordinator of a parenting project in Manurewa that she says wouldn’t have happened under the old structure.
She says Counties Manukau missed out on many additional services that other communities got through local fundraising, such as parenting programmes, migrant support and play groups. Without a strong volunteer base, she says, “the disparity was massive and it was a real challenge to provide services as we didn’t have the resources”.
She has recently successfully applied for external funding for two new services – an infant massage service, and a parenting programme for under-fives.
“We couldn’t do that before when we were lots of tiny little groups. Now Plunket can apply for funding as a regional funder. It’s a new approach that is really exciting.”
Cave has been a Plunket employee for 12 years. “I understand how some communities feel upset, but it’s great to hear how connected they are to Plunket. We definitely could have told this other side of the story better, to show how potentially those areas are helping these other communities, too.”
Plunket lists other examples of deprived communities getting new services that weren’t available in the past, such as supported Plunket playgroups in Flaxmere, Whangarei, Papakura, Manurewa, Gisborne, Whanganui and Porirua. Under the Ministry of Education contract, Plunket head office provides support to keep them running.
“Getting the seven supported playgroups up and running was only possible once Plunket had consolidated. Prior to transition, we didn’t have the capability to look at needs across the country and apply for contracts of this type,” says a Plunket spokesperson.
Malu adds that, despite fears that fundraising will disappear into an empty pool, community fundraising campaigns for local services will stay. The 400-odd Plunket groups around the country will be able to come up with local “business plans”, and these will be pooled into a national business plan decided by the Plunket board. “Any funds raised locally above and beyond those projects goes towards supporting communities that are less able to fundraise.
“The beauty of this is that we will see a consolidated approach and a national view. We can address urgent work using the might of the organisation.”
Malu thinks this is ultimately what New Zealanders want and what the country stands for. “We hope that New Zealand is capable of looking beyond our own borders to the needs of the wider community.
“We need to give it time. Hand on heart, people will start to see benefits. I understand that this kind of change is hard to wrap your head around when you’ve been quietly working away in your community and you feel like a national organisation is now involved.”
Plunket has consulted 300 parents and families in Karori and is holding 11 workshops to find out what locals want. As Karori parents wait for independent consultants to begin considering the future of their crèche and building, Skilton says: “What the whole thing smacks of to us is the corporatisation of communities. They’ve taken this muchloved 100-year-old brand and morphed it into a marketing company.”
“The beauty of this is that we will see a consolidated approach and a national view. We can address urgent work using the might of the organisation.”