Channel Feature: Kenzie’s Gift
Kenzie’s Gift to Families in Crisis
Few things can be more devastating to a family than a cancer diagnosis. It’s one of the most confusing, scary, desperate times that a family will have to endure, drawing on their deepest reserves of love, mutual respect and goodwill.
For all involved it’s a time of stress and hardship. While there are a lot of tools, support groups and charities to assist the sick, the siblings and children are often overlooked by a family that’s struggling through a horrible situation, and they are left to negotiate their own way through the grief
and misunderstanding.
Enter Kenzie’s Gift, a local charity set up by Nic Russell in memory of her three-year-old daughter Kenzie, after she died of cancer.
At the time of Kenzie’s diagnosis Nic herself was battling cancer, and the pair made international headlines during their combined Mother-Daughter fight for life. Unfortunately, Kenzie died shortly after being diagnosed and left behind a family reeling from the loss and struggling in a system that provides little comfort to the loved ones and family of victims.
As a trained play specialist, Nic had the experience and skills to help Kenzie through her battle, and to help Kenzie’s brother, Conor, to understand what was happening. Through this experience she found that there was insufficient support in this area in New Zealand and set up Kenzie’s gift in memory of her daughter.
Nic’s dream and the vision of Kenzie’s Gift is to offer hope and healing to other families affected by cancer by providing much needed psychosocial support.
Cancer is the biggest killer and cause of disability in children and adults
in New Zealand. There are 327 new diagnoses each week affecting 5232 family members.
The charity provides community-based specialist practitioners to assist with the emotional stress that families affected by cancer are under.
“Cancer throws families into disarray,” says Nic. “There’s lots of tough stuff and a lot of parents don’t know how to cope with it and they don’t know what to say to the kids.”
Nic was fortunate because she was a trained play specialist and had worked with children in hospitals in the UK for over 10 years before all
this happened.
After going through the experience with Kenzie, having to explain to
Conor what was happening to his sister, and talking to other families going through a similar ordeal, she realised that there is no support for families in New Zealand.
“I was preparing Conor for her dying. Building up to the funeral I was explaining what had happened, why her body stopped working. I was prepping him for all that stuff because there was nobody else to do it,” she says.
“I had the skills to do it, that was fine, but most people don’t and I shouldn’t have to be doing it.”
“Speaking to other families who were going through a similar situation, the same thing kept coming up time and time again – there was just no support to help the kids with the tough stuff and no support for parents either. There are lots of good organisations out there doing good stuff and offering support practically and financially and they’re great and they’re wonderful, but there’s a big gap in provision to help with the emotional support, that tough stuff.”
Nic started to speak to other health professionals and discovered they were saying the same thing – the whole area was underfunded and families are in crisis and need the support – but it needed a parent to champion the cause.
“It hasn’t been easy,” she says. “You get the big charities who want to trample all over the top of you, they do, even though we are not replicating anything they do but it’s the new kid on the block kind of mentality.”
Kenzie’s Gift does get a lot of support from businesses and a few North Shore businesses jumped on-board to help from the start.
The main service the charity provides is child and youth psychotherapy sessions for siblings and children who have been deeply affected by cancer in the family.
“The goal is to provide ways for the whole family to understand what’s going on.”
It’s evidence-based rehabilitation that works to make a real difference in peoples’ lives. This isn’t a corporate charity ticking the boxes, supplying x-number of toys to x-number of kids; this is real, evidence based, scientifically backed up methods of helping families to get through the grief and trauma of losing a loved one.
“It’s helping the kids to deal with the tough stuff,” says Nic. “It’s ‘right, this has happened, it’s damn unfair’ and they’re going to be angry. So it’s helping them deal with their anger, deal with those strong emotions that we as adults get.”
“It’s teaching them that look, it’s not fair, but these are the coping mechanisms that you can use, it’s having them deal with the things they’ve got and putting the strategies in place to help them face it.”
To help Nic and Kenzie’s Gift achieve its vision and make it a reality, you can offer your support to the charity in a number of ways.
Donations of any size are always gratefully received, or you can become a workplace sponsor by making Kenzie’s Gift the charity of choice at your workplace. The charity is always looking for volunteers to donate their professional services to help run the organisation. This can be anything from graphic design or marketing skills, to accountancy to help with the books.
Or you can pay for therapy sessions – just one or many – for a child
in need.
To find out more, please contact Kenzie’s Gift directly on 446 1100
or kenziesgift@kenziesgift.com
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