According to reports, deprived families of Wairarapa are not visiting the doctor or dentist and are getting treated from free services. The drift came to surface in a recently published report named Services, in Masterton: The views of Families and Whanau.

It is seen that though the Masterton families are tough, time and again they make use of the town's 136 social services. This number excludes Government organizations, physicians and medical centers, Wairarapa Hospital, district councils, schools or national helplines.

Yesterday, Social Development Minister Paula Bennett was in Wairarapa, at the time of release of the sleek 65-page report. It was created after collecting information from 400 families and conducting face-to-face interviews with
39 helpless families.

The report revealed that in the last 10 years, Wairarapa has experienced "some family tragedies", which cropped up due to some "serious family dysfunction". Because of this, the destitute families evade going to a doctor until and unless there is some emergency.

Ms. Bennett said that the report focused on the families, which required some sort of assistance. She said, "There has been a lot of work done on the most chaotic and complex and dysfunctional families, which doesn't mean it is exhausted. There is still work to do but I did purposely look at a broader picture".