Licence delays force closure of Cyril Ross Children’s Home after 31 years

Carisa Lee

Re­porter

[email protected]

For years, the Cyril Ross Chil­dren’s Home in Tu­na­puna was a life­line for chil­dren liv­ing with HIV/AIDS. On De­cem­ber 31, 2025, how­ev­er, the in­sti­tu­tion closed its doors af­ter fail­ing to re­ceive its res­i­dence li­cence from the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty.

The space along El Do­ra­do Road had served as a res­i­den­tial fa­cil­i­ty for the chil­dren for the last 31 years.

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue, St Vin­cent de Paul So­ci­ety pres­i­dent Nigel Phillips said it was a dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion to make, but not­ed it was not fi­nan­cial­ly vi­able to keep the space run­ning with­out a li­cence.

“We kept it open, even though we know it was not prof­itable to keep it open be­cause of the var­i­ous li­a­bil­i­ties that a child who is at the home came with,” he said.

When the de­ci­sion to close was made, four chil­dren—aged nine to 16—still called the home their refuge, sup­port­ed by nine staff mem­bers, Guardian Me­dia learned.

Phillips said over the years, they had all be­come like a fam­i­ly and he ex­pressed con­cern about the well-be­ing of the chil­dren.

“One was placed with her god­par­ent; an­oth­er girl who was do­ing very, very well, very ex­treme­ly well in school, and she was fac­ing fos­ter care by some­one else, and I heard that she didn’t take it very light­ly, you know, she was very emo­tion­al in terms of her place­ment,” he shared.

In 2018, the Gov­ern­ment start­ed the le­gal frame­work and rules for reg­u­lat­ing chil­dren’s homes. In 2020, the home changed its name from the Cyril Ross Nurs­ery to the Cyril Ross Chil­dren’s Home. Phillips said the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter pro­vid­ed grant fund­ing to as­sist with up­grades at the home as it worked to­ward meet­ing li­cens­ing re­quire­ments. The build­ing, he said, was ful­ly up­grad­ed and fire and safe­ty com­pli­ant.

“We would have brought it up to the stan­dards, so every time we go back, it is some­thing dif­fer­ent,” he said.

He said this forced the or­gan­i­sa­tion to dip in­to the so­ci­ety’s funds, cost­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly $500,000 over the past three years.

Even­tu­al­ly, he said, they re­ceived a pro­vi­sion­al li­cence, which ex­pired on De­cem­ber 31.

But af­ter nu­mer­ous at­tempts to re­ceive up­dates and en­gage in di­a­logue, he had the dif­fi­cult dis­cus­sion with his ex­ec­u­tive team that ul­ti­mate­ly led to the de­ci­sion to close the home. He said the home ex­ec­u­tive had dif­fi­cul­ty se­cur­ing meet­ings, there were lim­it­ed re­spons­es, and there was no clear path­way to full li­cens­ing.

“It’s like pulling teeth, as the old peo­ple say, try­ing to get a meet­ing with Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty or to have a dis­cus­sion on how we go for­ward,” he said.

While he un­der­stands that the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty has a man­date, Phillips be­lieves three years is too long, as NGOs need col­lab­o­ra­tion, not si­lence, es­pe­cial­ly with so many chil­dren wait­ing to be placed in an in­sti­tu­tion.

“Be­cause I said we changed the name legal­ly, it went through our at­tor­neys and what­ev­er le­gal as­pect to have the name change to where chil­dren will come in with­out HIV, and we would have put things in place and how we’re go­ing to deal with the pop­u­la­tion and ed­u­ca­tion and all these dif­fer­ent things,” he said.

He said the ball was in the court of those in au­thor­i­ty, but said there must be mean­ing­ful en­gage­ment, clear time­lines and fi­nan­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty.

Phillips said if this does not hap­pen, the So­ci­ety of St Vin­cent de Paul is open to rent­ing the fa­cil­i­ty for child-re­lat­ed use, such as a kinder­garten/nurs­ery or an­oth­er NGO, and has made of­fers to his staff who are now with­out a job.

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Van­dana Mo­hit said she would look in­to the mat­ter.

Mes­sages were al­so sent to for­mer Miss Uni­verse Wendy Fitzwilliam—an ad­vo­cate for chil­dren with HIV/AIDS who worked with the Cyril Ross home over the years and helped to raise funds—as well as to the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty, but there were no re­spons­es up to late yes­ter­day. For­mer gen­der min­is­ter Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy al­so did not com­ment.

When Guardian Me­dia ini­tial­ly vis­it­ed the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty web­site, Cyril Ross was one of the homes list­ed as li­cenced, but when the site was checked again yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, the home was not on the list.