Access: Fighting seclusion with collective activism
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Wise Group has withdrawn from Social Bond negotiations which would have seen "employment consultants" placed in GP practices targeting people with mental health issues.
Social bonds are a failure, Idiot Savant at http://norightturn.blogspot.co.nz/2016/07/social-bonds-are-failure.html -
linger, in reply to
Gotta love I/S's line that any profit-seeking "partner" to such negotiations, like the profiteering providers of private prisons, and like the finance industry as a whole, is
parasitical on the real economy [...]. Like the hippo arse-leech, it survives by inserting itself into the squishy parts of the real economy and sucking.
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Hilary Stace, in reply to
Why can't they just give a grant to the Wise group - which is a collaboration of providers - and ask them to get on with it. Would save so much time and money.
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Ashley's story featuring on the Sunday programme TV1, this Sunday 17th July.
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Sacha, in reply to
The theory is that NGOs need oversight from financiers, cos moneymen are gods.
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Angela Hart, in reply to
you'd think that by now the Minister would've told the DHB to do something pronto, talk about dragging their feet.
Well done to all the activists who've managed to get Ashley's story a high media profile.
If this doesn't get a result, maybe it's time to get people picketing the place he is imprisoned. There is a lot of public support for his plight. -
He's under the Mental Health Act which is a particularly tricky and fraught Act.
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Angela Hart, in reply to
Where there's a will, there's a way.
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Well Sunday managed to portray Ashley as a dangerous and violent psychotic schizophrenic who hears menacing voices. There was little mention of autism, learning disability, sensory overload, meltdowns, or that internal dialogues are common with most people including those with autism, although they can be confusing to others. Neither did they show his particular skill at making fishing flies.
All served to make him seem extreme and dangerous rather as an autistic person who has suffered and survived inappropriate and abusive treatment including extreme and enduring dental pain, at the hands of the state which is supposed to care for him.
Anyhow there is now a petition to free him, with a link in this latest article by Kirsty Johnston.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11676299 -
So there are four such cases as Kirsty as uncovered. http://m.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11676336
Human rights lawyer Tony Ellis has High Court case starting 27 July in Wellington on behalf of two (not Ashley).
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Apparently other people didn’t find the Sunday doc as anti-disability as me. And the petition got 1200 signatures overnight. Main negative comments seem to be about the cost of Ashley living in the community. It is very expensive keeping him where he is. There is a team trained up to support him in the community and the boss of that provider says he will take on the ‘risk’ of Ashley. The only obvious hold up (apart from a system that doesn’t work) is finding suitable accommodation, but it doesn’t have to be flash – it could just be an existing bach in a peaceful place.
http://tvnz.co.nz/sunday-news/locked-in-video-6482191 -
Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
Apparently other people didn’t find the Sunday doc as anti-disability as me.
I actually commandeered a telly last night to watch this particular program....(jesus wept there's no shortage of absolute crap on TV these days!)
I too found some of it portrayed Ashley as a dangerous nutbar (largely ignoring the autism), then his parents and the psychiatrist both said that the way he was being treated was making his behaviour worse. So I guess a certain balance was achieved.
Petition signed.....though Coleman may have to be hit over the head with it for it to have any effect.
Great work by Kirsty Johnston....
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Submissions required to ratify Optional protocol for UN CRPD. Suggestion here
http://aucklanddisabilitylaw.org.nz/?page_id=257 -
Not Ashley but some others in similar situation. Case taken on their behalf by Tony Ellis starts this week in the High Court in Wellington. Open to public.. Will be significant. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/kirsty-johnston/news/article.cfm?a_id=980&objectid=11680596
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Angela Hart, in reply to
Submissions required to ratify Optional protocol for UN CRPD. Suggestion here
http://aucklanddisabilitylaw.org.nz/?page_id=257Thanks Hilary, this is really important and I wouldn't have known about the opportunity if you hadn't posted the link. We really need to talk about this and spread the word as widely as possible because people who are not disabled by accident in New Zealand don't have rights, in effect, and this must change. The more submissions, the louder our voice.
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Sacha, in reply to
people who are not disabled by accident in New Zealand don't have rights, in effect
Yes, not much point in rights if they are not honoured.
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I found this wee snippet while idly seeing if DPA NZ were doing anything particularly interesting at the moment...
Minister for Disability Issues Hon Nicky Wagner and Victoria Manning talk to TVNZ Breakfast about the disability strategy.
No transcript, but I'm pretty sure Nicky Wagner was gloating about how NZ has led the UN convention on the rights of disabled people.
Sorry...got to run and vomit...
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Hilary Stace, in reply to
DPA has been active lately, particularly in the public policy area. There is some new activist leadership in Wellington and they have done a lot of submissions and organised a protest against the ableist movie Me before you. Only a couple of part time staff members.
Have on line Information Exchange http://www.dpa.org.nz/page/142/InformationExchange.html
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Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
Here's hoping that they get betterer and betterer...
Perhaps the next issue will feature the latest Spencer decision and the all important Training Order...
[38] The fifth issue is whether, as the Commission seeks as intervener, the Ministry should be directed to educate its staff as to the central significance of the human rights of those disabled persons and their carers, who are entitled to assistance under the Ministry’s PHDA policies and practices.
(my bold)
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Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
I weep
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/world/asia/knife-japan-stabbing-sagamihara.html?_r=0
“My aim is a world where people with multiple disabilities who have extreme difficulty living at home or being active in society can be euthanized with the consent of their guardians,”
And you know what?
As gutsmackingly awful as that is, I really do believe that there are some/many within the NZ Government (MPs and various Ministries) who hold the same views.
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FWIW, here's the Draft NZ Disability Strategy...
24 pages of aspirational twaddle.
They have done to the Disability Strategy what they did to the Carers Strategy a few years ago.
Oh, well. At least the PLODS have produced something to justify their salaries...
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What can you say? The comments made by people at the consultation meeting I attended have not been ignored but neither have they been treated with the urgency or the respect they deserve. The second round of consultations looms but you do wonder if there's really any point.
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walrus, in reply to
It's an exercise in creative writing, an essay by a sort of fictional generic 'disabled' persona. As such, I give it a C-, because it does at least demonstrate organisation and a serviceable ability with the English language. But as far as content goes... Many of us reading it will be thinking "yes, but is anyone actually going to DO anything,? Have you even recognised that things NEED TO BE DONE?" While the muggles will be reading it largely oblivious to the fact that this is not even close to the way things work now. What a pointless exercise. And they told us at the consultation meetings that they knew this thing "needs to have teeth". Well, it hasn't. I think they lied to imply it even could.
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Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
What can you say?
The current Strategy, published in April (the 1st, perhaps) 2001 by the Ministry of Health is looking like the better option.
Clear Objectives, with sub categories, that had They actually had a true and honest commitment to it would have seen real and measurable improvements in the lives of disabled New Zealanders over the past 15 years.
Tied to honouring the Convention (perhaps I should provide a definition of "honour"?) we would now be ticking off the 'wins', rather than licking our wounds over the losses.
NO mention of the Optional Protocol in the Draft....Goodness me, surely that is part of the work that DPA NZ Inc was being funded for, and it is not even on the 'to do' list?
Hmmm...as I have probably said before, the only time I've seen the current Strategy held up as a meaningful document, constructed in good faith and real intention was in the Atkinson case. The plaintiffs argued (and the Tribunal agreed) that the Strategy was supposed to be taken at its word. (I'm paraphrasing here...) The assumption was that the Ministry of Health published it with true sincerity.
The fact that the Misery ( and the Gummint) reacted to that assumption like cornered feral cats kinda says it all.
P.S. It used to be possible to look up the Annual Returns of DPA NZ and Carers NZ on the Charities Commission website, but they appear to have disappeared. Just wanted to see how much Gummint funding these two 'peak bodies' were getting to take the concerns of disabled Kiwis and their family carers to the Powers That Be.
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