Sophia's brave stand I DON'T BELONG IN A REST HOME!

A FACILITY’S CLOSURE COULD BE DIRE FOR YOUNG PATIENTS

- Fleur Guthrie

When aspiring jockey Sophia Malthus was left paralysed after falling from a bolting horse, she could have been placed in an aged-care home while adjusting to the life-changing injury.

Thankfully, the then 19-year old was able to secure a place at Auckland’s Laura Fergusson Rehabilitation centre, built especially for people with disabilities to help transition them back into the community.

But Sophia fears that experience will be lost for other young people, with the facility quietly closing down in March last year, amid talk of it not being financially sustainable.

Built in the late ‘60s, the centre aimed to give young disabled adults independence and stop them from being confined to rest homes or psychiatric institutions because there was nowhere else for them to go.

The Greenlane-based property had 45 purpose-built units, some housing intellectually disabled people who lived there permanently and who have since been moved to rest homes while the units sit empty.

Now, with the support of her step-sister Julia Davies and aunty Victoria Carter, Sophia is fighting the closure and rallying the government to intervene in the centre’s impending sale.

“It would be a tragedy if this facility is allowed to fold,” says the 23-year-old law student, who has lost most sensation from the collarbone down and is in a wheelchair. “If I’d been put in a rest home at 19, it would have affected not just my physical health but my mental health, too.