SPOTLIGHT: Bridget Jane Pou
Bridget Jane Pou (known as Jane) has professional and personal experience within the family carer community, putting her in a unique position. She’s a needs assessor for the NASC Bay of Plenty DHB assisting older people and their families for funded support services. Together with her partner, Tangiwai, she’s also a carer for her mother, Mary.
SPOTLIGHT: Maree Kirk
When asked for insights gained through her research on children with a disability, Maree Kirk says, “See the child first!” Maree initially started studying to find ways to best support her 21 year old son Spencer. However, it’s a path which eventually steered her towards an academic career, with her Masters degree focusing on wellbeing for children with a disability in New Zealand.
SPOTLIGHT: Ngaire Booth
For Ngaire Booth, the most challenging aspect of being a carer is the sense of isolation that it brings. Going through the pain of seeing her once energetic husband’s decline over the last 22 years from Parkinson’s disease has been profound. She says this isolation can be devastating, and solutions need to be tackled through policy change.
SPOTLIGHT: Meletilini Logan
SPOTLIGHT: Kailey Spicer
SPOTLIGHT: Diane Vivian
SPOTLIGHT: Sandra Jones
It’s a memorable image, and a powerful one: Dunedin mum Sandra Jones decked out in an orange fluoro suit holding a large sign reading “crime doesn't pay, caregiving doesn't either" in Dunedin’s Octagon. She was one of the battlers in the struggle for family carers to be paid - something which ultimately resulted in the Funded Family Care payment.
REMEMBER: Sonja Davies
I never met the iconic social and women's rights campaigner Sonja Davies, but she played an important role in the development of New Zealand's carer movement and the national charitable trust that is now Carers NZ.
Sonja died in 2005, years after I contacted her when, as a family carer living in rural Northland, I felt dismayed by the lack of help for people like me.