Our Story

He was nearly 2 weeks old when he came into our lives, we had no idea the coming months would turn from daily joy to daily sorrow so quickly.

We agreed to support a couple who had just received their baby boy through an informal fostering arrangement.  Caring for this baby while his foster mum was undergoing all kinds of medical help with a heart condition, (she had a history of strokes and was an insulin dependent diabetic so she experienced several complications requiring her to go in and out of hospital frequently over the three months of babies birth after undergoing heart surgery).

After several hospital stays and us picking baby up looking after him and returning him we naturally became very, very close to him and became increasingly more concerned for his care with every return and pick up.  This was due to the weak and fragile health condition of the foster mum who was trying to look after him at home with limited help.  The foster dad worked throughout the day.

We thought to ourselves, we just parent differently or they are new to this and we should just keep encouraging them and helping them by offering our support until our defining pick up, he was in his child car seat but he looked so different, we hadn’t seen him for three weeks but the difference was too great to ignore. He had a very darkened face, and his head was much bigger than it had a right to look. I remember gasping as my heart sank looking upon him, yet he saw me and gave me his beautiful smile. I took him out of his car seat and held him close, hubby noticed he had gone limp and looked like he had phased out.

Travelling back to our place sitting in the back of our car with him, I noticed an absence in him which was so sad. I contacted our Plunket nurse and asked if we could pop in on our way home for her to have a look at him as I was worried.  We got to the Plunket rooms and he was weighed, he had lost weight, then we were told he had a flat head, common when babies are left for long periods on their back she laid him on floor and his whole body jerked and jerked with his head facing to the right completing a 360. I wanted to cry as we all looked on in shock.

Bottle heated up, I started to give him a feed but panic settled in as I despaired that he couldn’t latch onto the teat, he never had this problem with drinking before, and the nurse said “he may have been left in his cot with a bottle propped up on a pillow to feed himself. That would explain his head always facing to the right she said. He may be having seizures you need to take him to the hospital”, we did this. “Not sure what it is that you saw” said the hospital doctor “you need to take him to your Dr for a referral to a Paediatrician”.

We did that, after explaining everything from pick up to the hospital our GP said she had to report all cases of possible abuse to the government department Child Youth and Family Services (Now called Oranga Tamariki)  and told us we needed to contact them because it would be in our interest to do so. We did. We also wrote a list of concerns to talk to the foster parents about as our weekend with baby was over and he was due to go home. We decided I would stay home with baby and hubby would explain to the parents what had happened over the weekend.  This was met with him being assaulted, the police involved, visits to doctors, lawyers and The Govt department for child welfare contacted.

Our genuine desire to help this family led to our eyes being opened to a system that is a whirlwind of trauma.  The overwhelm that came upon us was challenging.  Not knowing what was the best to do, the foster family didn’t want to talk with us, the doctors were referring him to a paediatrician for CT scan in case baby had been dropped or shaken, our lawyer telling us not to return him but keep him safe with us while he filed  a day to day parenting order application.  Oranga Tamariki telling us we weren’t to return him and they would file a report of concern and they would get back in touch with us. This all happened in a matter of a day.

We were not wanting to take baby from his family, we wanted them to hear our concerns and talk about what was going on in the home so we could help.  We did not want violence or loss of friendships but this is what we got.

We felt our concerns were validated when the Judge in the family law court gave us day to day parenting and guardianship, and the foster parents were not to have contact. 10 days later our joy was snatched away from us; the police arrived with a parenting and guardianship order and a warrant to uplift baby.

We couldn’t believe it! “How could this happen we have an order”,  I said to the police. They were so kind to us and really were put between a rock and a hard place. Our lawyer said co-operate they have a warrant, and so we said goodbye to this little boy my heart broke at that moment and the trauma and grief of this experience began to leave its scars.

A hearing held without our affidavit being tabled in time, we asked for cultural considerations in our affidavit, neither our lawyer or the lawyer for the child acknowledged this.  Lies told, our orders discharged and the foster mother passing away.  The heartbreak for everyone involved would prove difficult to heal from.

We continue to pray every day for this boys safety and hope that one day there will be a reconciliation between us and his foster family. But if it doesn’t we hope that we did enough to stop the neglect that was going on. We do not hear from the foster parents, we do not know how baby is, all eyes are off the family now and we were left to feel branded as the ones who were somehow in the wrong.

We believe NZ has a long way to go to walk the talk when it comes to children’s rights and putting children first. We have a family law court that does not measure neglect as a form of substantial abuse despite neglect being written into NZ law as a form of abuse. We have a child protection agency and a legal system that sadly witness the worst of the worse cases of physical abuse and death of children that sees reports of flat heads and weight loss as unsubstantial. We had been told we have to wait for something to happen, bruising or broken bones, how my heart wept for this baby every day and for all the children in NZ who suffer because we fail them.

And that is how Hands Up came into being.  I knew I had to put this experience to do good and not harm.   We hope the foster parents in our situation took our concerns seriously and that this little boy is in a home that is safe, nurturing and loving.

We are honoured to have successfully helped families and to  continue to successfully help families make positive life changes to have their children returned to them, or to help children be placed within  loving and nurturing homes when their parents are unable to do that, to give families and their supports a voice when no one is listening and importantly to be a safe port for children when the storm hits.

We believe, practice and share Every Child is precious. Hands Up is the legacy of our baby story.

We hope that you will put your Hand Up for a child today.  And we hope if you are struggling in the Family Court,  or with Oranga Tamariki, or not being given the cultural respect you are legally entitled to.  Please let our story be a light to let you know we have been there and can offer guidance and support to help you navigate in the storm.

Hands Up will bring the calm you are needing in your time of crisis.