Obituary: Keitha Weir

Keitha Weir

QSM, social welfare worker. Died aged 86

By her own accounts, Keitha Weir saw many awful things during her 28 years as a Government welfare officer, especially the 14 she spent in tougher parts of South Auckland.

A warm, friendly woman, dedicated to her job, she worked with and for children from infancy to adolescence.

That could mean tramping the streets of a dingy suburb in the early hours looking for five children, one a baby in a pram, who had wandered away after their mother had gone off with her boyfriend. The husband was in a mental hospital.

But if you helped to protect such children from neglect or abuse, that did not mean people regarded you as a Florence Nightingale. Some people, Ms Weir revealed when she retired in 1978, regarded you as an ogre, or a busybody snatching children away from their mothers.

One of her main tasks was being boss of a team of social workers preparing reports on youngsters appearing in the then Children's Court. That could involve much investigation of family backgrounds which was not always welcome, and it could be depressing.

"You have be prepared to have your heart broken many times," Miss Weir said of a career in which she saw most of the misfortunes that life can inflict on children.

She often commented to friends that, having seen some of the things she saw during a day, she would not consider she had done her job properly unless she could sit down quietly afterwards and weep.

Born in Masterton in 1918, Ms Weir Weir spent a lifetime trying to help or cheer up people.

Her working career began as a Karitane nurse. During World War II she was a welfare officer with the honorary rank of lieutenant in the British Army of India. She served in Rangoon, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), India and Burma (now Myanmar) and later with the Allied forces in Germany.

But her major work was in social welfare from 1950, beginning in Wellington with the then Welfare Division of the Department of Education, later absorbed into Social Welfare.

Her job included 10 years of on-the-spot case work in Waikato before she went to work in South Auckland.

She saw increasingly anti-social behaviour such as violence in young girls as well as boys, and also worried about what was contributing to the problems. And she fretted over the growing trend in the late 1970s for both parents to work.

"Mum often isn't there to kiss the children goodbye when they leave for school or to greet them and hear their news when they come home. And Dad is either too tired or can't show much interest."

"One of the most heart-rending experiences in this business," she once said, was seeing a mother giving up her baby for adoption.

She also felt for solo mothers often living a lonely existence in substandard accommodation with little stimulus in their lives.

 

She recalled once spending a weekend looking after three children beaten, neglected and covered with scabies, who had to be taken into the department's custody.

Foster parents in Otara were finally found to look after them. In response to profuse thanks, the foster father said simply: "Oh, that's all right. We call ourselves Christians - but that's not much good unless we behave like Christians."

Otara might have social problems, said Miss Weir, "but believe me, there are some hearts of gold there too."