A helping hand when it’s needed
Elsie, Kim and Olive Wallace.
The One Taupō Trust, formed in 2015, helps families who need to travel to access specialist medical treatment.
Helene Phillips, board chair, recalls the decision to present an annual Winter Festival, to raise funds for petrol and food vouchers.
“Ten years later, the need remains critical: transportation costs have risen, local medical services have diminished and ‘food for the table’ is a major struggle.
“Although more than 100 families have received relief, the board wishes there could be more.
“Our challenge is to encourage participation in the festival and for the community to donate directly to the Trust website – what people can accomplish together is larger and greater than that accomplished alone.”
About $45,000 has been distributed since the program started.
The festival is happening in July.
Kim Wallace’s story
After four years, the memories are still vivid but Kim Wallace can speak candidly about the difficult arrival of her first child, Elsie.
Elsie was born at 27 weeks, when Kim went into spontaneous early labour.
Six days of labour preceded a forceps delivery.
“So that was tough. When it all started happening, it happened really fast, and it was traumatic. I thought she was going to die. Everyone around me I think thought she was going to die.
“And (husband) Greg, he was just having to witness it all. I was going through the pain, but he was having to just watch this absolutely chaotic, scary thing happen with a clear mind.”
Elsie has spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy, which affects her limbs, mostly her legs and right hand. She has reasonable control over her left hand and head.
At five days old, as a super premature baby, a brain ultrasound picked up some abnormality, so the Wallaces knew she was likely to have problems.
A formal cerebral palsy diagnosis is not straightforward and didn’t come for two years because the growth motor function scale is complex.
Elsie spent 11 weeks in intensive care, in Waikato Hospital and then Rotorua, which Kim described as a “tricky time” – certainly not the expected entry into parenthood.
She can recall lacking sleep, trying to be attentive for doctors, listening to monitors all day and her own heart jumping at any abnormality.
It was constant stress, with not a lot to ease it, though she knew one day they would go home.
When they did, a workmate and a good friend had arranged for assistance from One Taupō Trust.
“It's not something that I had had to access for myself or anyone else … these vouchers just turned up.
“It was amazing. It goes so much deeper than being just financial because I had to stop working … Greg kept on because we own a house, and we have animals and bills to pay. But without our second income and the fact that Elsie was so early we hadn't bought any nappies, so when it came time to go home, the vouchers came in handy.
“Greg had been at home on his own for 11 or 12 weeks, so the fridge was empty. The house was well and truly stripped of everything.”
Greg, a builder, had been travelling to Hamilton twice a week and then every other day to Rotorua Hospital.
“The money we were spending on gas was huge.”
She is now familiar with the fund and how to apply, Kim said.
“A friend’s just gone through something similar but different. There's just a weight on your shoulders and the state of survival that you're in; you don't have time to think about finances.
“I think what the trust does is just incredible. It got us through.”
She has now applied for the friend.
“There's not a lot that people can do when you're going through a time like that. Nothing can fix it. Nothing can take it away. But just the knowledge that people are thinking of you.”
Flowers were appreciated but vouchers were “such a thoughtful and practical gift, not to sound ungrateful,” she laughed.
“Through my experience, I know how much difference it makes. I literally remember going to the supermarket and thinking I can shop and not have to worry about what I'm spending.”
And it has grown her appreciation of the Winter Festival.
“We always come down because the kids love it. Even just to see the lights on the domain it's so cool. And definitely a worthy cause.”