Turner Judy: General Debates 
Turner Judy: General Debates 
[Volume:607;Page:4205] 
JUDY TURNER (United Future) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. When family life seriously disintegrates to the point where children need to be relocated for reasons of safety there is always a huge sigh of relief when a caring relative is found who is willing to offer his or her home and resources to care for the children. 
Mrs S is one such relative. At 54 she was at the peak of her career earning in excess of $60000 and travelling the length and breadth of New Zealand to train clients. Her children had all finally left home. She had recently remarried and she and her husband were making great gains in their savings towards what they planned to be their golden years of retirement. What Mrs S and her husband had not counted on was that her daughter would become a desperate drug addict who would have an unplanned baby and who would leave the newborn baby girl in the care of her mother and disappear within days of the little girl’s birth. At first Mrs S reasoned that this situation would be a short-term problem that her daughter would use the time out to get her act together and would return to take up her parental responsibilities. Five years later it became evident that this was not to be the case. 
Relatives like Mrs S most of whom are grandparents are some of the unsung heroes of our nation. Today I would like to use the few minutes that I am allocated to make the House aware of the plight of many of those caregivers in the hope that I can begin to make a case for more substantial Government support for those people who are numbered in their thousands. 
Mrs S considers herself lucky compared with the many others that she is now in contact with through the Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Charitable Trust. Having raised her granddaughter from birth she does not have the struggle that many grandparents have when they receive severely traumatised older children into their care. She has not had to contend with her daughter or her daughter’s partner threatening her with violence in order to stop her from applying for income assistance—which would alert the department to their false application for the domestic purposes benefit. She has not had to remortgage her home to cover costs although there is nothing left of the retirement fund. 
The personal cost to those grandparents is immense. Grandparents caring for their grandchildren find it difficult to sustain their own social connectedness. They are included less and less in the activities of their old friends as it is difficult to participate in them with children in tow. They are often too old to fit in with their grandchildren’s friends’ parents. Other grandchildren in the family miss out on their share of their grandparents’ time and energy. There is an unavoidable inequity in the treatment of other grandchildren and that can breed family tension. 
Grandparents who are raising grandchildren live with a constant range of fears. Mrs S articulated those very clearly. She worries about the likelihood of the police turning up to tell her that her daughter has died of an overdose. She is worried that her daughter who is still a serious addict will one day drop off her subsequent children and walk away. She worries about her own health and what will happen if she cannot live long enough to complete the task of raising this child. Other grandparents fear the regular and erratic comings and goings and demands of the unfit parents of their grandchildren. Approximately 70 percent of those on the Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Charitable Trust database—and that is by no means exhaustive in its content—have experienced expensive court cases ranging in price from $8000 to $15000 in fighting their own children for the ongoing custody and safety of their grandchildren.