Aid claims fall on deaf ears

Kevin Norwood has worked hard, paid his taxes and now he can't hear and it's affecting his relationships and his life. Photo / Steven McNicholl

Kevin Norwood's mates have to watch out for him at work because he can't hear cars coming until they are almost on top of him.

He can't hear the birds singing in the morning, he can't hear suspicious noises outside at night and sometimes he talks over the top of his 10-year-old stepson because he doesn't hear the boy talking.

Yet Norwood, who has worked in noisy jobs all his adult life and at 49 is still too young for normal age-related hearing loss, has been turned down for an ACC subsidy for a hearing aid.

An ear, nose and throat specialist found that he has lost 12.9 per cent of normal hearing - 6.5 per cent "due to occupational noise exposure", 0.1 per cent due to non-work-related noise from the likes of lawnmowing and chainsawing at home and 6.3 per cent due to unknown causes.

Despite this, his ACC claims manager wrote: "ACC is able to fund hearing aids if we consider you need them and your need is a direct consequence of your work-related injury.

"Because your need is not a direct consequence of your work-related injury, you don't meet this requirement and we're therefore unable to fund hearing aids for you."

Norwood and the National Foundation for the Deaf, which is helping him to appeal to the District Court, are mystified and angry.

"How do they justify that?" Norwood says. "It's not as though I'm trying to rip the system off. I've worked all my life and I've had very few ACC claims."

He spent the first 12 years of his working life, from 1976 to 1988, as a panelbeater in the days before panelbeaters wore earmuffs.

For the past 16 years he has worked for Takanini-based drilling and waste disposal company Parkinson and Holland. For a decade he has run the company's noisy rocksaw.

He has worn earmuffs since 1988 and is now the company's health and safety officer, partly because his own deafness has made him safety-conscious.

"It's dangerous working on the truck, because you don't hear something coming up behind you," he says. "I have to quite often see things. The guys at work know that I'm slightly deaf. I actually have a couple of guys that are always looking after me."

His partner, Gail McGuinness, says it frustrates her and her son Ryan, 10.

"He doesn't hear Ryan talking. He will talk over him because he doesn't know," she says. "At night time you hear noises but he doesn't hear anything, it's a safety thing that worries me.

"He has worked hard, paid his taxes. Now he can't hear and it's affecting his relationship and his life, and he can't get funded.

"All we want is just for him to hear and be part of the family again."