17/08/2026
“I’m not going to tell you I’m better because I’ve been here for a long time,” Lucy Castella says. “I’m just a normal person.”
Anyone who’s met Lucy in her forty years of support work would agree that she’s anything but.
As institutions closed across Aotearoa, Spectrum’s first Pasifika Service Manager, Siainiu Fa’alogo, brought Lucy from Māngere Hospital to Spectrum Care.
There were no disability support workers before her, no map, no precedent. Siainiu’s advice?
“Look after them like you look after your own family.”
And Lucy has done just that.
In 1994, Lucy travelled with people from Maota o le Alofa, Spectrum Care’s first Pasifika home, to the Cook Islands and Samoa. Some had never met their relatives before, but “they had a feeling it was their families.” Lucy says seeing that recognition on their faces made her realise she was doing something important.
Just last March, Lucy chaperoned a visit to Samoa, where someone we support met their mum for the first time. This mahi is still as meaningful as it was back then.
But you won’t catch Lucy boasting about these moments, because it has never been about her.
“It’s about the people,” she says.
“It’s a very rewarding job. You just need to have patience.”
Someone she used to support would run onto the road trying to chase after trucks. Lucy arranged for them to tour a truck stop and ride in a fire truck. They never ran onto the road again.
Good support doesn’t have to be as big as a fire truck, though. Lucy will be the first to tell you that.
“It’s the little things,” she says.
Because for Lucy, the little things aren’t so little.
She remembers when people had no say at all. Now she gives that choice back. One decision, one goal, one small win at a time.
And if at first she doesn’t succeed? She comes back and tries again.
“Every day is a new day.”
Whānau isn’t just blood. It’s who shows up and keeps showing up. Forty years of Lucy’s mahi is proof of how far that can take you.
