Displaced Wairoa man Gavin Jones returns home

Gavin Jones was delighted to reunite with sister Roseann in Wairoa after nearly four months living in Rotorua . Wairoa Mayor Craig Little brought him home and took this picture.

A Wairoa man who became the face of the displaced vulnerable people left in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle has finally returned to friends and family in his lifelong hometown.

Gavin Jones, a 69-year-old with an intellectual disability, returned to Wairoa in the company of Mayor Craig Little on Saturday to an elated greeting from locals, who came out with signs and balloons on short notice.

Mr Little, along with many in the community, had been trying for weeks to bring Gavin home after he was moved from his IDEA Services-run home in Wairoa to a different property hours away in Rotorua.

The property was unaffected by Cyclone Gabrielle but was quietly shut down shortly after.

In Wairoa, Gavin knew many of the locals as friends and was free to go where he wanted, but in Rotorua he was unable to go out unaccompanied and knew hardly anyone.

Mayor Little started a petition to bring Gavin home after becoming frustrated and disillusioned dealing with conflicting information from Government agencies, ministers and MPs.

He said earlier, in his petition, that Gavin’s care in Rotorua was “OK” but the situation overall was “cruel” and mentioned “elder, psychological and/or emotional abuse”.

“My wife and I went and saw Gavin one day in Rotorua. This was a guy who gets up, gets changed in the morning, gets talking to people around town . . . when we arrived he was still in his pyjamas and he was in a locked facility,” Mr Little told Hawke’s Bay Today.

Gavin’s sister Roseann wanted him home, but she wanted to know that there would be a long-term solution in place first, Mr Little said.

“Gavin would ring me every two or three days and say, ‘Craig, can you get me home mate? I hate it over here, I want to go home’.”

He wasn’t able to tell people too far in advance that he was taking Gavin home, as he didn’t want to get everyone’s hopes up only to be told he couldn’t bring him back.

But he eventually drove to Rotorua and brought Gavin back secure in the knowledge that he had a place to go to when he got there.

“On the way home he would tell me, ‘I just hated it Craig, I hated being locked up’.

“He is absolutely buggered. He got home, went to bed at half past five, slept through until eight in the morning and he has done it again the second night.”

Gavin’s story has had a happy ending. He is staying with a local couple who are able to support him while a local hairdresser offered to help him out.

“The love for this man is just huge in Wairoa,” Mr Little said.

“We’re hopefully going to have a bit of a party for him on Thursday night at the club.”

Mr Little said as well as some of the other residents of Gavin’s old IDEA Services home, there were between 20 and 30 others in a similar position who also wanted to come back to Wairoa, but had been told there was no room for them after the closure of the cyclone-damaged Glengarry Lifecare rest home in Wairoa.

“We’ve got a real concern with how these people are being treated.

“We love these people and they have every right to live. Some of them are very disabled and some of them aren’t as much so, but they have a right to live in our communities if they desire to.”

A frustrated Mr Little believes it shouldn’t have to be his job as mayor to get people like Gavin the treatment they deserve.

But he is 100 percent willing to fight for them and the fight might not be over yet.

— Hawke’s Bay Today