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Source: Radio New Zealand

A woman who spent 15 years in prison says being released into the outside world was like being pushed out the gate.

The coroner is calling for urgent psychological support for long term prisoners before and after release, after a former prisoner who served nearly 30 years for murder died by suicide on his release.

Those who work at the frontline said something must be done.

Gail Maney spent a total of 15 years in prison and about 10 years on parole before her conviction for the murder of West Auckland tyre-fitter Deane Fuller-Sandys was quashed.

She found being released from the structure of prison difficult.

“I was very used to being behind closed doors, and everything’s done for you and managed for you, and then it’s like you’re just suddenly pushed out the gate and into society,” she said.

“I remember thinking ‘is this it? what now?’. It’s a really strange feeling.”

Maney said she was lucky to have the ability to put her life together, though she had to do much of it herself

Reporting to probation was also stressful, Maney said.

“Dealing with probation was one of the hardest parts for me,” she said.

“They’ll tell you that if you feel like your in danger or anything like that that you can contact them and talk to them, but if you tell probation that you’re in a difficult situation they will have you recalled back to prison straight away.

“Realistically, you don’t want to go back to jail so you’re not going to reach out to probation.”

Maney spoke about the need to have someone who understood the needs of those who had been in prison for a long time.

“That could mean having a more gentle approach to how they manage parolees in society,” she said.

In January, Coroner Bruce Hesketh ruled that Lee Rawiri Kohiti died by suicide two months after he left prison.

He recommended the Department of Corrections work with other agencies to address systemic issues in providing services to prisoners on release.

Mahi Mihinare Anglican Action offered accommodation and reintegration for parolees in Hamilton.

Chief executive Peter Osbourne said they had first-hand experience with suicide and self-harm.

“We’ve seen the struggles that men and women have actually coming back into a society, and often it’s a society that doesn’t want them.

“We’re sort of a very punitive culture in this country, where we think we just should lock people up and some would say throw away the key.”

Osbourne spoke about the impact prison can have on people.

“In Scandinavia they’re closing down prisons, here we are in New Zealand building new ones because we think locking people up keeps us safe,” he said

“But actually, I don’t think it does, because at some point those people come out and they come out more damaged and traumatised than they did when they went inside.”

Dr Emmy Rākete from People Against Prisons Aotearoa said parolees were affected by a lack of investment in state housing and the health system.

“There’s just this disinvestment from social infrastructure of all kinds, and the enormous suicide rate amongst parolees is just one symptom of this underlying rot,” she said.

The rate of suicide among parolees over the last three years was unknown because Corrections did not centrally record the data, nor was it always alerted to the cause of death when a person was serving a community based sentence.

Chief mental health and addictions officer Emma Gardner said Community Corrections staff tracked the progress of those they managed in the community and referred to mental health services when required.

“Once someone is released, like anyone else in the community, they have access to the public health service for any mental health support they might require, she said.

“If we know someone is going to require ongoing mental health support after they are released, Corrections works closely with relevant agencies and organisations to ensure the necessary referrals are made to enable a smooth transition for that support to continue.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A new report showing one in three households have struggled to access affordable, nutritious food in the past year has come as a surprise even to the charities putting food on tables.

The Hunger Monitor is the country’s first comprehensive tally of food insecurity and will serve as a benchmark for annual updates.

It surveyed 3000 people late last year.

From its warehouse in Manukau, South Auckland Christian Foodbank delivered 40,000 food parcels last year and chief executive Ian Foster said that number was climbing.

“I can remember in Covid we were doing 100 a day and we thought how the heck are we doing that, this year we’ve averaged 177 a day.”

He founded the foodbank 18 years ago.

“What we’re seeing more of now is budgeters have done everything they can but people simply do not have enough money because their income has not increased anywhere near living costs,” Foster said.

“Until we turn that around, we’ve got a major problem.”

He was surprised to learn one in three households had struggled to afford food in the past year – they did not all turn up at food banks.

The Hunger Monitor also found nearly one in five households, 18 percent, had experienced severe food insecurity in that time.

It was commissioned by the New Zealand Food Network, a collection of foodbanks and food rescue charities. Its chief executive Gavin Findlay said the numbers are startling.

“I did find it confronting and a little bit surprising, based on our own previous research and anecdotal evicence from our hubs we knew there was an issue but I think the scale and scope of it across demographics, across income levels, was surprising.”

Nearly half of low-income households faced food insecurity and just under a third of full-time workers experienced food insecurity.

High income houses with debt were not immune to struggles at the supermarket.

“Even at high income levels, over $156,000 household income, you’ve got 12 percent who are indicating that they’ve had some form of food insecurity. You just never would have thought that was possible.”

Findlay said the report was an important benchmark.

“We now absolutely know that there is an issue, we need to continue what we’re doing in terms of supporting those that need food support. We may even need to do more.”

The survey showed two-thirds, 68 percent of households that struggled to afford food had experienced that for the first time last year and that many were hesitant to access food support, citing shame or embarrassment as the reason.

Vision West provided food parcels, ran a social supermarket, and offered a free community lunch once a week.

Its director of partnerships Brook Turner said demand for food became evident during the pandemic but there had been a 50 percent jump in households approaching it for help since this time last year.

“I just don’t understand why food isn’t seen as a legitimate need. I get that we need to have benefits that are enough that people have enough to put food on the table, that’s always going to be the first choice that mum should be able to go to the grocery store and buy food for her kids but that’s not the reality.”

He said the Hunger Monitor showed that hunger was an entrenched issue that New Zealand was facing.

Henderson Budget Service chief executive Tracey Phillips said it was working with 200 families and got around 60 new referrals a month.

“Whānau with children have got under $100 left over at the end of the week after they’ve paid some of those other bills, paid their rent, paid their power, put some fuel in the car to get to work. It’s tough.”

She said in the five years she had been at the budgeting service, the need had become more widespread because incomes were not keeping up with basic costs.

“It used to be people who weren’t working and were going through just a bit of a rough patch needing that temporary support, whereas now there’s working whānau that are really struggling to put food on the table,” Phillips said.

“Cost of living has driven the cost of food up but wages and benefits are not keeping up with that so there’s just a disconnect between the amount of money that’s coming in versus what’s needed just to put food on the table.”

Turner said the need for foodbanks was evident.

“We need emergency food for people who fall through the system and I hope the government can hear that.”

Vision West is among food charities that are asking government to extend their funding beyond June this year, or they risk reducing their services or closing.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A deadly Covid wave returns, just as New Zealand gets its final pandemic report card

Another wave of Covid-19 is circulating again through New Zealand communities, pushing up hospitalisations and deaths, and reminding Kiwis of a time they hoped was a distant memory.

The arrival of the ninth wave coincides with the delivery of the long-awaited final report card on how New Zealand handled the Covid pandemic.

Health experts say wastewater monitoring suggests community transmission is at its highest level in more than six months, and already in a single week, 50 hospitalisations and 19 deaths linked to the virus have been reported, underscoring that the virus remains one of the country’s most serious infectious diseases.

“It’s going to be infecting thousands of people every day, giving some people long Covid and obviously putting people in hospital and killing some people,” epidemiologist and Professor of Public Health Michael Baker tells The Detail.

“So, it’s still our most important and infectious disease. It’s still ahead of influenza, which, in the past, was our most impactful infection. So, we need to take it seriously.

He says the latest surge appears to be driven largely by waning immunity and declining booster uptake, rather than a dramatically new variant.

“It’s just the dynamics between the virus that wants to infect us and our own immunity, which is usually very good at stopping it. But when the virus gets an edge, then we get more cases.

“The most likely cause is that it’s quite a long time since many people were last infected, but even more important, people are not getting their boosters, so they are missing that opportunity to top up their antibodies.”

He puts that down to complacency.

“I think that really summarises it. And there is an element of not wanting to think about it because for many people it was a very difficult time in their lives … people want to put it in their rearview mirror and move on.

“[But] we can’t afford to not think about this virus and act on it.”

Unlike earlier surges, he says this wave is not being tracked by mass testing.

In part, because rapid antigen tests are no longer free and fewer people are reporting results, meaning official case numbers capture only a fraction of infections.

Instead, health authorities are relying on hospital admissions and wastewater analysis to get a clearer picture of the situation.

“We have still got very good surveillance systems that are not affected by how much energy people have to do that [test]”, says Professor Baker, who advises New Zealanders to test, get a booster, wear a mask if necessary, and isolate for five days if positive.

Just as the virus surges again, the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Covid-19 has been released – an extensive examination of how New Zealand navigated the crisis.

“Overall, this report concludes that Aotearoa New Zealand did well in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic. On the whole, the decisions taken and methods used during the Covid-19 response were considered and appropriate,” the commissioners wrote.

“We have also identified where they were lacking. New Zealand’s response strategy and settings weren’t always sufficiently responsive to changing circumstances; for example, they weren’t adapted early enough to deal with later variants of the virus. At a time when speed was often critical, some decisions had to be made without enough information and data, or without sufficient consideration of all the impacts that might arise, or without important checks and monitoring.”

The commission has issued recommendations aimed at strengthening New Zealand’s response to future pandemics, which Baker welcomes.

“They are great documents, we have now got a lot of really good recommendations, very good analysis of the issues.

“So, I think the challenge now is to act on these recommendations and do it quickly because we could get another pandemic of the intensity of Covid-19, any day, or we could get something much worse.”

He says the elimination strategy was “highly successful – it basically kept us largely Covid-free for a couple of years while people got vaccinated … we have got a lot to be grateful for.”

The government isn’t as impressed, highlighting that the report notes that Auckland was kept in lockdown, despite receiving advice that restrictions could end sooner.

“When you look at the report, it’s pretty equivocal on most of these points; it’s saying the decision makers were doing the best they could with incomplete information,” Professor Baker says.

“You could argue, in hindsight perhaps, that lockdowns in Auckland should have been ended sooner, but you have to do what we call a counter-factual analysis, and what would that have looked like?

“And we would have had Delta, the Delta outbreak, which was being controlled in Auckland, spreading throughout the country. It was much more harmful than Omicron, which came after that.

“It might have put a real dampener on business and social activities over that summer period for the whole country.”

Six years after the first case arrived in the country, the virus remains a persistent threat – even as the country continues to debate how it handled the original crisis.

And as this latest wave shows, Covid-19 is not just a chapter in New Zealand’s past. It remains part of its future.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand