Source: Radio New Zealand
123RF
Health New Zealand has released long-awaited guidelines to help grieving families cope with the loss of a baby during pregnancy or in the first year after birth.
The National Bereavement Care Pathway for Perinatal Loss was released on Thursday.
It outlined the nine standards that will guide the future approach to bereavement care across Aotearoa.
Every year in New Zealand about 700 to 900 families experience perinatal loss.
An additional 13,000 to 15,000 families are affected by miscarriage before 20 weeks.
“Tuituia te Kahu sets a clear national direction for compassionate, culturally safe and consistent bereavement care,” Health New Zealand wrote.
“It will be used to guide the planning and commissioning of services across primary, community, hospital and specialist settings.”
Technical Advisory Group co-chair Vicki Culling told RNZ that New Zealand had a world-renowned maternity service, but nothing woven in for the death of a baby, and support of a whānau.
“We hope this report is a start to addressing that,” she said.
The National Bereavement Care Pathway for Perinatal Loss. Supplied
The other Technical Advisory Group co-chair, Kendall Stevenson, said the pathway was designed upon a concept of whāriki (woven mat), with each strand being a standard interwoven with one another to enable strength, interconnectedness, adaptability, and balance.
Stevenson said the ingoa, Tuituia Te Kahu, emerged within a dream – recognised as a tohu pai.
Tuituia is derived from tuia or tuitui – to sew, to bind, to thread (repeatedly).
While kahu is used as a nod to Kahu Taurima – Health New Zealand’s programme to support whānau from pregnancy through early childhood. “Kahu is also a term used for a pēpi who dies,” Stevenson said.
Stevenson believed the current health system had failed for a long time because something like Tuituia Te Kahu had not existed.
She hoped it would be implemented in full.
Kendall Stevenson Supplied/Te Tātai Hauora o Hine
Stevenson said Culling and herself had made it clear to Health New Zealand that the name itself was significant.
“If we feel like that name is not being well-respected, we will be holding people to account for that,” she said.
After the release of Tuituia Te Kahu, Stevenson said she would maintain her call to action.
“That’s the very least that whānau deserve”.
Vicki Culling RNZ/Samuel Rillstone
Culling said there was more work to be done.
“What does it mean for this to be woven into our maternity system? What will it look like? How will it impact bereaved whānau? What will it mean for them?
“We know what a difference it will make. We absolutely know. And so we want to see that difference still happen. We don’t want it to be piecemeal. We really want this to be carried in its fullness and to rightly have that ingoa – that name.”
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
