Leza Ward wants the voice of support workers to be heard. Photo / Warren Buckland
A home support worker says if Hawke's Bay District Health Board had talked more to those it contracts to help elderly clients, it could have avoided the mea culpa over its home help cut letter.
Leza Ward, who's been in the job for more than 14 years, says those who do basic chores for the elderly felt "undervalued" and "not respected".
The Public Service Association, which represents home support workers, is currently calling for DHBs around NZ to meet with them, saying there has been a refusal at high levels to properly fund and implement guaranteed hours of work.
It comes after Hawke's Bay District Health Board [HBDHB] sent a letter out to 605 people telling them their help with home chores would be cut, adding that housework was a good way to keep fit and healthy.
The cut, which was only for those 65-plus and not those with more complex home help needs, was quickly reinstated and an apology issued after a community backlash.
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Napier-based Ward, a single mum with two grown children, said she had seen thousands of clients.
Home support workers spend a short period of time with each client, generally an elderly or disabled person or injured person in need of help with things like housework, meal preparation and personal hygiene, to enable them to continue to live independently.
"We see the client, what they are doing, the decline, and yet we were not consulted when the Hawke's Bay DHB decided to make the cuts.
"They do not talk to us."
Ward said clients could die or no longer need help, and with no guarantee of a replacement, she would suddenly lose income.
"I need a second job to up my income. I struggle. I have been on low hours for so long I have given up hope of getting more hours.
"We are screaming out for work."
Ward said she got a message about the cuts from Access Community Health a day before Hawke's Bay Today published the first story about basic housework services being ceased.
She said money was tight and she couldn't afford a cut in the hours, yet somehow the DHB had overlooked not just elderly clients, but the views of support workers.
"I just hope that the DHB will maybe talk to us and maybe say 'look this is the situation, what do you think, how can we help you do your job so you can help the elderly, the infirm, and be happy' and we might not have all the answers or the right ideas, but we have some.
"We watch people decline, die and lot of the times if we come across a client who has died, we still go to the next client with a smile. We have to carry on.
"It's when we get home that we break down.
"People forget that we are support workers, not cleaners, not counsellors. Sadly, the only ones that value us are our clients."
HBDHB acting executive director planning and funding Emma Foster said the DHB management acknowledged the 2019 basic housework support review was not robust.
The DHB had begun revisiting that review process to better understand how events transpired, she said.
"DHB management agrees home support workers hold valuable insights into the wellbeing of clients they visit in the home and indeed should be an integral part of any process regarding proposed changes or reviews," Foster said.
The DHB accepted there would be "many learnings" as a result of its review and was committed to putting systems in place to ensure the same situation "never" happened again, she said.
"We thank our providers and their staff for working with us through this next period."