Sandra Paterson: NZ struggling to cope with women in crisis

Two weeks ago I wrote about a woman called Leah who had been living on the streets for several months.

The night I met her she was proudly carrying her week-old baby. She had found some accommodation in the last weeks of pregnancy and had come into town to show off her little son to her friends in the homeless community.

Last week, I saw her again and knew instantly something was wrong. Her face was grey and drawn and she was back living on the streets.

"Where's baby?" I asked. "They took him," she said, her eyes filling with tears. The month-old infant is now in interim social welfare custody while decisions are being made for the future.

I've spent a bit of time with Leah over the past week and her life story is one of unbelievable pain. It also raises many questions. How are we, as a society, caring for people in crisis? How should we be supporting the charities and volunteers who are helping them? And what should the Government be doing?

Leah's immediate concern - although the word "concern" - does not convey the gut-wrenching agony of it all, was being denied the right to visit or feed her baby during the interim custody period.

She had been allowed to see him once in seven days, for half an hour; and she was anxious about her milk drying up and about losing the precious mother-baby bond.

Leah is the first to admit she has issues to deal with. But she is the only mother the little bloke has. He needs her, physically and psychologically, and, surely, as long as there are no concerns for his immediate safety, allowing her regular visits would be the humane, decent thing to do.

No matter how much time it takes, or how many extra social workers, mothers should be allowed to see and feed their babies. The bigger issue Leah's story raises, however, is how we are caring, or not caring, for women in crisis - especially mothers, because when a woman comes with children in tow, assisting her is just that much more complicated.

How do we help women struggling with everything from drug and alcohol dependence, eating disorders and self-harm to domestic violence and sexual abuse?

Talking to women's health workers around the country, I hear the same answer over and over: residential care, places where women can live, with their children, for several months. Where they can receive comprehensive medical care, rehabilitation and counselling and where they can learn a range of life-skills, such as hygiene, cooking and parenting techniques.

And time and again I hear the same cry: there are not enough of these centres.

The Ministry of Health, you see, no longer believes in bricks and mortar. Its policy-makers prefer a community approach, by which people with problems remain at home. There is no denying that approach is sufficient for many, but for an increasing number of cases a social worker popping in to visit once a week is simply not effective.

As one charity worker said: "People in crisis need a multidisciplinary team to wrap around them and help them to heal - in body and mind. They need it for anywhere from three to nine months. And, most importantly for women, they need to be able to take their children."

There are only a handful of residential centres for women and children in the whole country - one in the Waikato, a couple in Auckland and one in Christchurch. All of them are having to turn women away.

New Zealand women in crisis are even being sent to Australia to get live-in, around-the-clock care. Five women have been sent from Auckland to one women's residential home in Sydney in the past year.

Various organisations are trying to set up more facilities here but, like nearly all charities, they struggle for funding, relying heavily on donations.

Speaking of which - and seeing as we're in the middle of the tax wars - here's a win-win suggestion for politicians: raise the threshold for tax rebates on charitable donations.

Right now the first $1890 you give to worthy causes qualifies for a tax rebate, so you get a third of it back. In other countries, such as England and the United States, the Governments are much more generous to donors and, unlike our own, encourage philanthropy.

If the threshold was raised to, say, $5000, everybody would win - the donors, the charities, the people they are trying to help and the Government.

Much as this Government wouldn't like having to pay a higher rebate, surely more fiscal support for charity work would mean a lighter burden on the social welfare and public health systems.

Anyway, as I write this, I have just heard that Leah has been accepted into exactly the kind of place she needs. From what I have seen of her, she is highly intelligent and determined and with expert, loving care she will be able to create a new life for herself and her baby. Sadly, there are hundreds more Leahs out there who may not get the chance.

* Sandra Paterson is a Mt Maunganui journalist.