Auckland paediatric nurse Angela Meikle told Kaitiaki she was deeply passionate about child health, but “running out of steam” trying to see up to seven families a day in their homes — and up to 10 per day in clinics.
“There are expectations that nurses, because we’re a caring profession, we’re taken advantage of slightly because we care,” she said.
“We don’t want to turn those people away because we don’t know what questions they might be bringing and what difficulties they might be bringing to find support for.”
So nurses often ended up doing paperwork in their own time and skipping breaks in order to make sure families were doing okay.
‘So it’s a bit of a double slap in the face because we haven’t had a pay offer in line with inflation – at the same time the pay equity claim has been basically shut down.’
Many new parents needed time and “whanaungatanga” to open up about sensitive issues like family harm, co-sleeping arrangements or post-natal depression — but rushed appointments did not allow for this, Meikle said.
Social referrals also, for families in poverty, were often complex and time-consuming particularly in a cost-of-living crisis — yet nurses had less time to support them.
Plunket nurses had only been offered a 2.5 per cent pay rise and had their pay equity claim effectively blocked by the Coalition Government just weeks away from filing, she said.
“So it’s a bit of a double slap in the face because we haven’t had a pay offer in line with inflation – at the same time the pay equity claim has been basically shut down.”
Meikle’s comments come after an NZNO survey of 278 Plunket nurses revealed 60 per cent had recently considered quitting; 40 per cent didn’t have time to provide post-natal depression support; 31 per cent didn’t have time to screen for family violence and 36 per cent didn’t have time to help with breastfeeding.
NZNO delegate, Plunket community Karitane worker Dana Struthers, said Plunket nurses and support workers were so rushed between appointments, they only had time to “weigh, measure and get out the door”.
“She needs to reassure the public there was no deliberate effort . . . to inflate the figures so she can claim the Government has fulfilled their Coalition agreement policy to ‘properly’ fund Plunket.
$4.8million funding gap ‘concerning’
Meanwhile, a scrap continues over a $4.8 million discrepancy between figures cited by Associate Minister of Health Casey Costello and Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ (HNZ).
Costello told RNZ in September that Plunket had been given a 17.5 per cent funding increase — $13 million — to its 2023/24 baseline funding of $74m since the Coalition Government took office.
But, in documents released to NZNO under the Official Information Act, HNZ said the funding increase was only 10 per cent as Costello’s 2023/24 figures excluded a $4.8m “pay disparity” sum.
Including that meant that 2023/24 baseline funding was in fact $78.9m — which meant it had grown by less than 10 per cent to the current $87m.
The pay disparity funding was provided by Labour to HNZ for community health workers in 2023.
Costello told Kaitiaki she had been supplied the 17.5 per cent figure by HNZ.
HNZ director of child, youth and maternity Deborah Woodley told Kaitiaki that at the time, in 2023/24, the $4.8m “sat in a separate contract” so was not included in the Plunket funding figures as it had subsequently.
“Put simply, the difference is largely due to whether pay disparity funding is included in the 2023/24 baseline funding.”
NZNO chief executive Paul Goulter said there were “significant concerns” about the funding information provided publicly by Costello.
“She needs to reassure the public there was no deliberate effort by her office to inflate the figures so she can claim the Government has fulfilled their Coalition agreement policy to ‘properly’ fund Plunket.”
In its November 2023 coalition agreement with National, NZ First leader Winston Peters promised to “ensure Plunket is funded to do their job properly”.
In August, a group of about 480 Plunket nurses wrote to Peters urging him to keep his Coalition promise.
However, they have not heard back.
Plunket nurses first raised the alarm in July after being ordered to double their workloads and cut appointment times, saying they feared such pressure would put families at risk if nurses missed something.