Access: Disability as a wicked policy problem
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Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
As if that nice Mr Key would do such a ....thing.
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I don't generally look at the DPA NZ website anymore...long since given up on them ever actually doing what they ought to....be the voice of all New Zealanders with a disability.
However, the new CEO, Waddy Wadsworth in the new DPA NZ newsletter acknowledges DPA NZ has...
to regain the trust of our members, so that we can work to the benefit of all disabled people. We need to have regular and open communications with you on an ongoing basis. We need to know what you need, and where you would like us to focus our efforts and resources to help you achieve your goals.
It would appear that DPA NZ funding has been cut.....ouch!
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Angela Hart, in reply to
Thanks Rosemary, perhaps this is the long awaited attitudinal shift we need from DPA. Hopefully it is their government funding that has been cut and they can now see that dependence on government funding is unwise and dangerous.
I made some comments on their site which are awaiting moderation, I cannot see any other comments. It will be interesting to see what gets through :-) -
Sacha, in reply to
one has ascended to the stratosphere of the upper echelon
I've encountered one sociopath who must have been promoted for those very characteristics.
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Sacha, in reply to
I cannot see any other comments
funny that
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Sacha, in reply to
the new CEO, Waddy Wadsworth
seems to be relaxing on the Hokianga in that photo. How clueless are these people?
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Time to get rid of the Minimum Wage Exemption, will the CYF review make a difference for disabled kids, the 'conversation' in May about the new Disability Strategy and other disability policy issues.
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Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
seems to be relaxing on the Hokianga
Well spotted...my first home in New Zealand. :-)
While folk are around....Himself and myself are giving serious thought to pushing (with some effort) aside our cynicism at the whole shebang and engaging with the NZ Disability Strategy revision process.
The are events at which, perhaps, some members of the Reference Group will be in attendance.
I have spoken with two of the Atkinson Plaintiffs over the past week and needless to say the bitterness they feel towards the Government runs deep.
Nobody seems to be pursuing this, and with all due respect to the plaintiffs (the ones who are still alive), they are getting on in years.
One is in their eighties.
"I can't accept that this is the end of it...I just can't."
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Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
I would like to see a list of ALL employers/businesses who have a Minimum Wage Exemption.
ALL of them.
Re the CYFs review...does 9 years as a foster parent(over 60 children, including some with disabilities) give me any right to comment on this?
Very hard to do without risking Privacy Act breaches...but a shake up of CYFs?
Most definitely.
"Serco" type contracts....no, no, no.
Better resourcing for existing Child Protection NGO's, serious rethink about the whole "culturally appropriate placement" mantra....(**Not** an auspicious start to a placement when the Social Worker repeatedly tells you that you are the last resort as there were no "culturally safe" foster homes available.) If CYFs are going to "dump and run"...then the least they could do is use the time they are not having to worry about the child's safety to put some serious work into the neglectful/abusive parents or facilitating prompt sourcing of an appropriate long term placement.
I could go on...but the best thing out of the review is extending the age that the children are supported....17 is way too young to be cast into the wind.
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Hilary Stace, in reply to
Do consider engaging. I think there has been an effort to bring some good people together in the reference group and not just do the same old stuff.
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Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
I think there has been an effort to bring some good people together in the reference group and not just do the same old stuff.
We've spent a considerable part of the weekend catching up on our reading in preparation...hit a bit of a bump...
With regard to the Reference Group...a summary of the February meeting states...
The term ‘lived experience’ was considered offensive by some members of the group and it was agreed that the term ‘disabled people, their families and allies’ be used instead.
Please help, someone...our disability politically correct language and terminology knowledge clearly has gaps.
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Hilary Stace, in reply to
I think (not sure though in this context) that some disabled people object to non disabled people saying they have lived experience of disability although that is through caring for someone who is disabled rather than personal impairment. Sometimes parents use that term for eg lived experience of autism, although it is the children who have the lived experience of autism They have lived experience of parenting a child with autism.
So probably it was just unclear whose lived experience is being referred to. So the phrase they used clarifies who they are talking about.
But you could go along to a meeting and ask.
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So a new report shows National Standards haven't worked. Can we say we told you so? Sad that for many students a potential love of learning and self esteem have been sacrificed in this experiment. I heard from a principal recently how parents tell him, in front of the child, that the child is below standard. The child might be great at art or music or PE but the parent only cares about the national standards results in literacy and numeracy.
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Sacha, in reply to
If you view disability as an interaction between personal impairment and environmental/social settings, then a partner or parent will not experience the impairment, but they may well experience the disablement, especially social attitudes. Discrimination and injustice hurts everyone to some degree.
Having said which, there is a long and troubling history of disabled people being spoken for by our families and those who provide services for us. That needs to be deliberately overturned. Strengthening voices requires investment, which in turn requires us being seen as worth investing in.
Intellectual frameworks ultimately depend on the coherence of views in the committee and the govt agencies who have a stake in this process.
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Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
But you could go along to a meeting and ask.
We did.
And while we were doing the final round up, the talk fest at the end where each group's spokesperson tells all assembled the most important talking points....the words of this woman kept coming into mind mind.
It Ain't Exactly Sexy. . .
To put it bluntly -- because this need is as blunt as it gets -- we must have our asses cleaned after we shit and pee. Or we have others' fingers inserted in our rectums to assist shitting. Or we have tubes of plastic inserted inside us to assist peeing or we have re-routed anuses and pissers so we do it all into bags attached to our bodies. . . .
If we are ever to be really at home in the world and in ourselves, then we must say these things out loud. And we must say them with real language. So they are understood as the everyday necessity and struggle they are.
. . . If our shame tells us that our needs lack dignity, that we lack dignity, then the next thing we hear our shame say is that it is more dignified to die than to live with these basic needs that take away our privacy and seem like such a burden.From "It Ain't Exactly Sexy" by Cheryl Marie Wade, in the November, 1991 Disability Rag -- reprinted in THE RAGGED EDGE
The Disability Experience from the Pages of the First Fifteen Years of The Disability Rag. quoted in this article.Cheryl Marie Wade wrote this piece after finding that during the battle for disability rights to become part of American law...it was other disabled people who had the hardest problem accepting that for some there is an absolute need (and don't the 'community' hate that word) for hands on care, every single day. That without this level of hands on care, 'life' simply cannot happen.
You'd think that in a meeting with other members of the disability community in 2016, someone living with that same need for care would feel that their primary concern was listened to respected and acknowledged as being an important issue in the discussion about the revised New Zealand Disability Strategy. Especially since the whole Paid Family Carers/ Part 4 PHDAct/ Funded Family Care shit storm, that even the UN Monitoring committee found reprehensible.
And in an effort to be less 'demanding' of his right to "care", the idea (trying to get into the "Big Sky" thinking mode) of perhaps taking the original 15 Objectives of the 2001 Strategy and linking them to the appropriate Articles in the Convention....to bring both documents together...well you'd think that might have been worthy of a mention from our group's spokesperson as a way of strengthening both...
Well, no.
We offered up the Ministry for Disability idea, and the idea of having a "like minds, like mine" publicity campaign to raise the image of disabled people in the eyes of the public.
Both very laudable....but not exactly doing much to address the reality that for some in the 'community'...the need for an entitlement to care, delivered by the carer of their choice, in the environment of their choice... is paramount.
No other issue really counts unless this basic need is acknowledged by all.
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Sacha, in reply to
the idea of having a "like minds, like mine" publicity campaign to raise the image of disabled people in the eyes of the public.
This govt pissed that opportunity away by using it as a substitute for withdrawn local NGO funding.
Which is 100% more than the previous govt did.
Best not wait for clowns to act.
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Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
Best not wait for clowns to act.
“I feel welcomed by my community. I feel respected for my views and my contribution is received on an equal basis with others.”
Well linked Sacha...how did you know that was exactly how Himself was feeling after the meeting? (sarc)
(When I say "feel"...its not in a 'he needed an affirming hug' way...he's absolutely used to it.)
One comment made was "we have a right wing government"...as if that makes any difference to disability issues.
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Sacha, in reply to
as if that makes any difference
verily.
longer-term project .. -
Rosemary, anything more to report from the consultation meeting, or questions to ask. Ours is next week
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Hilary...if you have registered(we didn't) you should get a document that has headings for areas of discussion. Each group is supposed to follow the leads from those headings.
We were (in bringing up the PHDAct/FFC thing) told that we were being too detail focused...hence the Big Sky phrasing.
Got a really busy day today...WOF for Himself via ASRU Outreach clinic, bloodtests and squeeze in a meet up with a H&D commission advocate to see if there is a way of restoring some semblance of a working relationship with our NASC.
BUT...Himself is determined to make a submission on this....so...we will be hard at it trying to use what we perceived about the tone yesterday to construct submissions in the right terms. If that makes any sense.
Personally...I don't see why the current Strategy needs significant change other than bolstering it with articles from the now ratified Convention.
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Sacha, in reply to
They will be re-writing the Strategy away from social model towards the human rights framing that the Convention favours. Which actually reduces its usefulness the further from Thorndon we travel.
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Hilary Stace, in reply to
Most important is that something is implemented. The original NZDS had no legislation requiring government agencies to actually do anything.
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Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
The part of the Act that birthed the Strategy in the first place...but, no, I can't make it read as if they actually have to implement any of it.
Hmmmm...I would have thought backed up by the Convention, as in the Disability Action Plan...get more traction?
Trouble is....there is NO entitlement...at all...
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Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
If anyone has a spare few minutes could they watch this and let me know what they think Annette King is trying to say about home based disability supports....
It would appear that National has cut over $8 million from the disability support budget by 'curtailing demand'...but had a budget blowout of $37 odd million on DSS....
Coleman's reply was a scary "she should stop promising everything to everyone because it just doesn't work"
Dismissive of the needs of disabled...
I think MOH:DSS disabled are going to be thrown under a bus in the next budget... the Part4 amendment to the PHDAct in 2013 paved the way for denying funding for those with high and very high care needs living as part of a family unit, as the new Act says..
“70A Purpose of this Part
“(1) The purpose of this Part is to keep the funding of support services
provided by persons to their family members within sustainable
limits in order to give effect to the restraint imposed
by section 3(2) and to affirm the principle that, in the context
of the funding of support services, families generally have
primary responsibility for the well-being of their family members.Bold mine.
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Marc C, in reply to
Yes, scary indeed, what Minister Coleman answered to Annette King. I watched Question Time today, and hence know what this was about.
All this bold promotion of putting more into Pharmac did make me think instantly, I wonder where they will cut spending to fund for extra medicines to be bought and sold.
This government is a master in creating spin and in applying propaganda, and the largely underfunded, under-resourced, and under-skilled media does not even notice what goes on, it seems. That is unless they choose to be ignorant, as they do not want to upset the government.
It is the same BS we get with this incessant talk about "wrap around services" for those with sickness and disability on benefits. When actually examining what they have done, it boils down just to increased funding of some more case managers to offer "intensive case management", which means, more funding and efforts to move people off benefits, into whatever jobs there are, no matter what the medium to longer term outcomes.
There is no convincing and available information on extra health spending for those with disabilities on benefits, and as we see and hear from Coleman today, they even seem to be cutting spending on people with disability.
Read the OIA info offered in the posts found via the links below, which MSM have NOT reported on:
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