Mumsy: The Taranaki woman who's taken more than 600 youngsters off the street and given them a safe place
Friday, 25 June 2021
There was a time when Helen Te Wake had 28 street kids living in her three-bedroom home because they had nowhere else to go.
And over the years the New Plymouth woman has given more than 600 children, teenagers, and young adults, a roof over their head, kai to eat, and clothes to wear.
“You can't turn your back on them, you can’t,” the mother-of-four says. “You just want to look after them.”
The 60-year-old’s mission to protect and love the children of Taranaki has recently been recognised through an award by her employer - OCS New Zealand.
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The kindergarten cleaner calls it her “prize possession” alongside her album full of photos of the youngsters she's helped.
Te Wake has taken in and raised children of gang members, youngsters with addictions and behaviour disorders, and others who have been through countless foster homes.
“Every one of them I loved – every one of them had a story,” she says. “Everybody called me mumsy.”
She knew what it was like to be cold and hungry, and partly because one of her own children had died, she couldn’t bear the thought of another child going through that.
“When you haven’t got one, and you can’t get it back, you just do what you do,' she says. “We did it for six years, full on.”
Oranga Tamariki – Ministry for Children’s latest figures show 5400 children are currently in their care. Dozens of those are in Taranaki.
But it wasn’t statistics that first “scared” Te Wake into giving these children somewhere safe to be more than 10 years ago, it was her two daughters.
Around 2009, she was working full-time in the kitchen at the New Plymouth RSA and didn’t have much time left over for her own children.
“I came home one night and my girls were not there, they'd disappeared – it took me days to find them,” she says.
“It was a reality check for me – if my girls are out on the streets, how many others are out on the streets?”
She started driving to the neighbourhoods, bridges and other spots where she knew youngsters would sleep, and offering to take them home.
The children staying with her would tell her where others were, and she would go and collect them, too.
Then, Te Wake's hospitality started spreading by word of mouth.
“Kids would just turn up at my door.'
The first thing she would do is lay down her rules, which she says were tough, and probably wouldn’t stand were she an official caregiver.
“When they came in, I’d give them the hard word,” she said. “They didn’t step over those boundaries.
“You had to be 10 steps ahead of them.”
The oldest she had staying was 36, the youngest around 8.
“It was a sad state of affairs,' she says. “But it didn’t matter, as long as they respected my house.”
But, she wasn't that hard on them.
“I would say ‘if you get stuck, just ring’,” she says. “The kids became an extended family of my family.”
Te Wake said they didn’t eat fancy meals, but there was always a meal for them.
“These kids are hungry, to them it doesn’t matter,” she says. “The pantries and cupboards were always open. They were grateful for that.”
The grandmother-of-five is not wealthy, and never has been.
“I live day to day, week to week,” she says. “You make do with what you’ve got.”
When she had 28 crammed in with herself and her girls, they made it work.
“There was somewhere to sleep – we did marae style,” Te Wake says. “I wanted to give them somewhere safe to be.”
She says she took on “all sorts”, and they weren't all the “stereotypical” street kid.
One boy was raised by wealthy grandparents in Mōkau.
“He got everything he wanted, they had money left right and centre, and he wound up with me.”
One was the son of a head of the Black Power gang, others had ADHD.
“We had a lot of them that had addictions,” Te Wake says. “I spent a lot of time at the courthouse with these kids, I got to the point I spent more time there than I spent at home.”
She says many had been told they were “good for nothing” during their upbringing, and it was hard to break that.
One boy didn’t unpack his backpack for weeks, and kept saying he was going to be moving soon – he had been through 72 foster homes.
“He didn’t know how to settle,” Te Wake says. “I said ‘hey, I’m not going to give up on you. I’m still going to fight your battle. You're not going anywhere, this is your home – you’re here until you're ready to leave.’
“It took him a while to believe that.”
Through her time caring for the youngsters, she worked to change their patterns – encouraging them to mow lawns for free, and do good.
She knew what it was like to be in their shoes.
Te Wake moved to Taranaki 17 years ago, but grew up in the Hokianga.
She ran away when she was a youngster, camping out overnight in barns and sheds.
“I ran away from home, did all the dumb s..t,” she says. “I did get a bit cold, you get a bit hungry.”
She slowed down on taking in children when one of her daughters got pregnant, as she’d have her own mokopuna in her house and wanted to care for them.
But, she still sees many of the ones she raised as her own – the majority of them have kept in touch.
She smiles listing all the things they're doing, where they live, and the jobs they have.
“It makes me proud, that they are who they are,” Te Wake says. “What they’ve been through, they don’t want their kids to go through it – it's breaking that cycle.”
And, when they do come back, “it's like when you haven’t seen your family for a long time”.
She may have mostly stopped taking in people off the street, but it never stopped all together.
She had three adults and a child staying in her home just before Christmas, because they were struggling to find their own place.
Te Wake also picks up bread and leftover food from organisations three days a week, and gives it out to schools and kindergartens.
All her efforts recently saw her win the inaugural OCS Australia & New Zealand Annual Star Award, which was given to her by her employer – OCS New Zealand.
OCS’s operations director, Gavin Upston, presented the award to Te Wake personally.
“Helen is a shining light and is one of those special people that goes out of her way to help anyone in need,” he said in a written statement. ”
Award or not, Te Wake has no plans to stop helping people.
“Hell no, only when I’m six foot under.'