Long term trauma care still needed in Fiji after Winston

Transcript

Elderly and disabled people left behind in remote areas of Fiji are among those continuing to need long term trauma counselling after Cyclone Winston.

The counselling service Empower Pacific helped about 9000 people in the immediate aftermath of February's devastating category 5 storm.

Paulini Vakacegu  told Sally Round women and children have continued to suffer in abusive environments as a result of the stress caused by Winston.

PAULINI VAKACEGU: It's just because now they have a lot of issues after the cyclone. They have financial issues so the husband is actually taking out their frustrations on them so children are also affected and they are also subjected to child abuse as a result of that. So mostly it's just the families' inability to cope on a daily basis and this is even more so for the people who come from the farming communities, because most of them have worked a very long time to try to actually build something for themselves. To see that being destroyed it's a lot to take in and this is why we have a lot of violence that's happening within the family settings, in the rural communities especially.

SALLY ROUND: Do you think they're getting the help they need?

PV: We would like to think so but one of the challenges that we have been facing are the remote locations of some of these clients, it's proving to be an issue for us in terms of reaching them. Especially those people who are out in the outer islands - the remote outer islands -for example in the Lau group. These are the things that we really need to look into and to make sure that we are able to go across and see them and we need support for that and we are hopeful that this will continue because we know we have been advocating for this, there is a need for us to follow up. We really need to be actually get them to stand and to be able to fend for themselves, independent of other support.

SR: You talked about the long-term couselling that is now going on - the long-term care - for what sort of cases?

PV: These are for disabled clients and mostly for those people who are out either in the interior or in the outer islands where our offices or branches are located, especially the elderly. In some of these cases it's very sad to know during the cyclone people who were left disabled, old people who were left behind - because the younger ones just take off and they are forgotten - so they are traumatised as a result of that and some of them sustained injuries and they lost their homes. We haven't seen anything like Winston so people were not really prepared. When that happened people were actually just scared - they didn't think, they just wanted to actually look after themselves, take care of their own families and some of them just took off without thinking about the other people who might be vulnerable, who might be in need like the elderly and the people who are disabled. There are a lot of behavioural issues also noticed in children. Some of the schools that we visited during the three months period that we were providing intensive psychosocial support, they are doing ok, but there are others who still need some assistance in terms of getting them to move forward. We have noted that the children are having behavioural issues. They are actually dropping out - in terms of schoolwork they are not doing so well if they were doing well before. It's something that is becoming obvious now so we are coming to the time where they are looking forward to external examinations and these are the things that are worrying parents.