KEY POINTS:
New Zealand's only support group for families with fetal alcohol syndrome has been forced to close after losing its main funding from the Alcohol Advisory Council.
The Fetal Alcohol Support Trust was wound up in March despite evidence that fetal alcohol syndrome affects about 1 per cent of New Zealand babies, or about 600 infants a year.
The trust co-ordinator, Hamilton grandmother Shirley Winikerei, is still fielding calls on a voluntary basis from affected families.
Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft said last week he planned to get the syndrome identified as "a key factor causative of offending", after two visiting American experts said 60 per cent of young people with the syndrome got into trouble with the law.
They said the syndrome, caused by mothers drinking during pregnancy, caused brain damage which made victims unable to focus or learn from experience, easily frustrated, quick to anger and unable to understand the consequences of their actions.
Mrs Winikerei said many well-known young offenders and child abuse victims showed tell-tale physical signs of the syndrome, such as small eyes and no groove between the nose and upper lip.
"It's not a small problem. It's an epidemic," she said. "I'm sick of seeing our babies murdered and raped and stuck in washing machines or driers."
Margaret Jackson, a former world president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union who chaired the support trust until it closed, said the Alcohol Advisory Council (Alac) funded a conference on the problem in 1997 and initially paid Mrs Winikerei to give presentations around the country. But that funding stopped.
"Alac stopped giving money last year. They said it should be the Health Department."
Mrs Winikerei said the Health Ministry's chief adviser for public health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, offered to find some funds, but rang back later and said there was no money available.
"I'm back to where I started 17 years ago, doing it on my own," she said. "I live on the invalid's benefit and I'm still raising my grand-daughter with fetal alcohol syndrome."
Mrs Winikerei, 63, first heard of the syndrome when a counsellor at the Hamilton Youth Resource Centre told her in 1990 that her adopted daughter fitted the profile of someone affected by alcohol while still a fetus.
By then it was too late to do much to help the girl, who became pregnant at 14 and has gone on to have eight children, all of whom have been taken from her by Child, Youth and Family.
Her first-born daughter was diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome as a young child and has received special needs funding. She now attends a special school.
"She's now 15 and a great success because I battled the system to get her needs met," Mrs Winikerei said.
Alac chief executive Gerard Vaughan said Alac had never given ongoing funding to the support trust but provided "one-off grants".
Ministry of Health acting group manager Chris Laurenson said the Inter-Agency Committee on Drugs was developing an action plan to address fetal alcohol syndrome.
* CONSEQUENCES OFMOTHER'S TIPPLE
A quarter of pregnant NZ women drank alcohol in the last week (2002 survey).
1 per cent of babies are born with fetal alcohol syndrome.
Affected children may be unable to focus or learn from experience, easily frustrated, quick to anger and unable to understand the consequences of their actions.
A third of them have physical signs such as small eyes and no groove between the nose and upper lip.
