Possibility of reform without education and consultation?

Can reform happen without an education process?

In short that is what the current federal government is hoping to achieve with the National Disability Insurance Scheme or NDIS. Despite what is popularly believed, the NDIS is more than a change in the way support needs for people living with disability and their families is funded.

True! Currently from July 2014, the NDIS will be gradually rolled out across Australia, and will cover all Australians living with a significant permanent (life-long) disability by July 1019. It is hoped that the introduction of the NDIS, will end the current unjust way funding is distributed.

It is also hoped the there will be greater access to services and the type of services people living with significant disabilities and their families can access regardless of where they live in Australian.  The NDIS has been promoted as ‘giving greater choice’ to people living with disabilities and their families. However, it is also predicted that the NDIS will provide a more competitive environment in the disability sector, creating a ‘market place’ environment. We know with competition there is also the threat of monopolization of the market place, as is the case with the two supermarket giants in this country. 

Monopolization in a particular corner of any given market, may in fact lead to a reduction of choice and this is something disability advocates need to be on guard about, as it threatens the core value or choice on which the National Disability Insurance Scheme was founded.

This is because the NDIS is not a funding reform. It is far more ranging in its scope than a change in the funding agreements between the federal and state governments, that see the federal government through an increase in the Medicare levy, fund disability care for the first time.

This is the first important myth for us to comprehend as we look towards the introduction of the NDIS.  This reform in not about funding!  While there will be an increase in funding available to those who need it and an increase in the number of people ‘eligible’ for direct support services, therapies and equipment needs, this is not the core of the NDIS. Yet in terms of the public education and information released I have seen so far, much of it has been around funding, changes to eligibility, changes to the way people are asses when applying, facts & figures around numbers and amount and debate of its costings and whether the Australian economy can afford it or afford not to induce it.

If the NDIS is not a funding reform, what is it? Essentially, as I understand it the NDIS is about social reform.

It is a major shift in the way we value people with a disability in this country. By acknowaging that people living with disabilities, their families and full-time carers live in poverty while they struggle to paid for medical expenses, early intervention therapies that can increase the quality of life the children or loved one who becomes disable can enjoy. It is about people with a disability and their families joining the social fabric for what makes Australia a great place to live.

The NDIS reform needs to remain a fundamentally a reform on how we view people with disability in this country.  The NDIS is about equality for all people living with a disability, their families and those who care for them. Until those standards are reached nationwide the work of NDIS campaigners with not be completed.

Funding reform and moving people to be funded under the National Disability Insurance Scheme and giving them dignity of choice for the first time is only half the battle.  Dignity of choice and direction over their own lives can only be achieved if ‘real’ choice is available and all activities available to other Australians are accessible to those living with disabilities and those who care for them. In essence the NDIS promises to provide real choices for real people!

This reform for the first time recognises the rights of those living with disabilities have the right to a choice in lifestyles that is consistent with every other Australian. This is the message that I think has been lost as we discuss and debate the economic value in the change for funding arrangements for the lifetime support needs of someone living with a disability.

In real terms the NDIS is looking at things like access to the education sector via providing specialized education support; access to a range of different therapies support not just what is popular of cheapest, we want to see an end to standard service and a choice in the market to open up; A choice is mobility aids and communication devices that increase the person’s ability to access and communicate in the community; physical, social and psychological access to the community in which a person living with a disability is a key player in the ability to deliver the NDIS reforms; access to employment and accommodation choices, being able to eat as a family at a restaurants and access holiday accommodations and destinations without needing to worry about access issues.

It is the change is the way we as society view access issues that pose and major threat to the NDIS reform process, where no longer worried about the legal access requirements for new buildings. Our biggest hurls in terms of access, is changing the attitudes of everyday Australians towards people living with disabilities and their families.   

While the tokenism attitude still occurs (like disable access toilets being used as storerooms, ramps with incorrect gradients, signs without brail or voice information, abstance  for captions for chimera goes, token ‘disabled’ employees and a inaccessible public transport system for people with disability) the type of social  inclusion that the NDIS reform aims to embody is still unattainable. I don’t think Australians comprehends the type of sweeping reforms that should  result  due to the NDIS, nor do I think we have the combine attitude to accept all people with disabilities as equal members of society.

We it comes to people living with disabilities, who they are; what they look like and especially what they are capable of achieving, I think we all fail in our correct assessments.  I am proven wrong everyday by the young people I work with.  They learn and comprehend things I think we not possible.  Traditionally thinking of what people with disabilities particular those with high intellectual process challenges are very limiting. For the NDIS to work our personal concepts of what is possible needs to explode!  I say that as an industry insider.  How much more will the general public struggle with the social reform that is the NDIS.

If you believe the government that the delivery of NDIS reform has began you do your maths and quick realised the focus is solely on the funding reform.   Funding alone can’t produce social change. We have seen it with smoking and drinking, Increase through taxes incurring prices rises do not work alone.  With finical reform needs to be public education to challenge along held misconceptions like it’s ok to drink while pregnant.

So how does the government think it can bring in major reform regarding the rights and choices of people with disabilities without any major advertisement on its reform processes?  Removing someone from the disability support pension and providing them with free taxies to get to work does not address, inequality in the workplace, the historical under employment of people with disabilities, the fact the many work places are physically inaccessible, yet alone the need to address what disability actual is!

Simple basic facts like people with intellectual disabilities can have a basic conversation to enable them to tell you how they want the hair cut.  The majority of them are able to have a conversation way beyond that complexity.  What amazes me is this perception is if a person is non verbal the do not functioning intellectually so there is no point talking to a non-verbal person and thus it becomes its acceptable to treat them as a non human being.

If retail staff, don’t want to talk to me, then how does the government expect me to go to a job interview, let alone be employed with uncontrollable seizures.  I can’t help but question some of the social reforms that are targeted by the NDIS and employment targets and thus the premise on which the National Disabilities Insurance Scheme is costs on is comprised.

Real reform for real people such as the NDIS needs education and disabilities awareness to be addressed.  Anything else denies people living with disabilities true equality.    

Australian Government's Continue to fail people with disabilities

When we think about the violation of Human Rights, we rarely stop to remember that these violations are occurring within our own boarders.  Our thoughts wander to those countries who imprison people without charge. Yet there are several people currently serving indefinite time in Australian Prisons, because our legal system deems them unfit to stand trial.  This usually occurs when a person has a significant intellectual or psychological disability.

Access to the justice system for people with intellectual disability in Australia was just one issue the UN Commission for Human Rights raised with a delegation from Australia last month.  Others issues included, the percentage of people with disabilities living in residential care and the lack of alternative supported accommodations. 

Within this population women with indigenous backgrounds are more likely to experience rape and repeated sexual abuse. Often these women have little concept of what life holds outside their ‘homes’ receiving no support from sexual health services and certainly no access to justice system.    I know all too well from personal experience even when a victim of sexual assault is able to make a complaint and provide evidence, the police strongly discourage you from making formal charge especially when the accused in intellectually demisted.

The current Australian Government’s plan to ensure the rights of people living with disability and to move them and their families towards full social inclusion is the National Disability Scheme. While this scheme will go a long way towards, the improvement in access to medical assistance, early intervention, daily living needs, more appropriate accommodation for younger Australians, access to education and employment.

It does not to address the rights and living conditions of long term residential program residents and increased the protection of women in their care against assault. The government has failed in the recognition of the lack of access to the justice system particularly among those currently placed in residential care and diagnosed with mental illness, nor has it produced and viable alternative for the imprisonment of offenders who are unable to understand the judgital system.

Currently people with an intellectual disability or needing assistance are ineligible to vote, unless they can prove the ability to do so. In other Western countries it is on the government’s responsibility to prove the person’s incapacity to vote.

The Commission for Human Rights also expressed concerns over the non existence of planning to assist and care for in the event of a natural disaster. My own experience having been to two floods in the last five years has lead to very limited support during this period.  Most support services are suspended while staff, deal with their own crisis. People with disability while to faces with the effects of disaster still need assistance to get out of bed,  be feed and showed.  No planning has occurred to address their needs.

People with disability because of lack of community understand and little social inclusion, have no natural support system. Finding themselves further isolated and neglected during natural disasters. All levels of government continually fail to ensure the Human Rights people living with disability and mental health issues are provided.

It saddens me that I need to use my world blog action day post to highlight the systemic violation of Human Rights that people living with disability face in a prosperous nation such as Australia. 

Put your hand up for ability!

"The ideal of equal opportunity holds no water unless it truly 

includes all people, including people with disabilities."

K. Martinez

Human Rights means equality

Access For All

"The ideal of equal opportunity holds no water unless it truly 

includes all people, including people with disabilities."

K. Martinez

World Blog Action Day is now only five days away.

Those who follow my blog will know the theme this year is 

is Human Rights 

As a advocate for people living with disability in Australia, I can tell you first hand that the rights of people with disability in Australia are often abuse. The likely hood of abuse increase for those living in residential facilities and group homes. Currently there are over 6,000 people with disability under the age of 40 in nursing homes. These facilitates and the programs are designed for those in their late 70's, 80's and 90's.

Younger people under 40 rarely have the opportunity to access the community and there only interaction is with people twice their age.  The incidence of likely emotional, finical, physical and sexual abuse increases if you are female and further escalate in you are of indigenous or Torrist  Straight decent.  , 

It is a shock to head that there is such a high incidence of people living within Australia who are denied so much access to basic humane rights and recently the Australian Government received a negative report card from the UN Commission on Human Rights.  Many human rights areas are not covered specifically for people living with disabilities under Australian Legislation. 

Please join me to learn more on October 16, 2013.  

Debbie    

Everyone has potential!

October 16 2013 is Blog action day! Its a day where bloggers around the world link up through social media to draw attention to a single issue or event. This is the 4th year I have participated in the event.    Every blogger taking part in the event has a badge to signified their participation. For more information visit the website

  The theme for 2013 is HUMAN RIGHTS. When I think of human rights I naturally thing of issues such as children sold in to sex slavery, the treatment of women in the third world; restrictions on religious practices and children captured by the IRA in Africa. 

However, human rights issues are involved wherever a restriction on individual choice is made.  To read more on current Human Rights concerns for the UN visit their Human Rights Page. 

Right now, it may shock you to know a large Human Right  Issue is emerging here within Australia. 

It's the issue I wrote about in last years blog post for Blog Acton Day or BAD#12. The National Disability Insurance Scheme or the  NDIS. Since that time the NDIS has undergone a name change and current under trail in five states around Australia, and will be phase in across all states over next five years.  Recently here in Australia we had an election and the new government has reverted back to the name of the NDIS.

For the first all levels of government across Australia recognized that people with disability and their families have the right to CHOICE. This recognition brings us into line with the UN charter of Human Rights. In making this recognition Australia highlights the are different possibilities for individuals, regardless of the nature of their disability and the level of impairment.  

However Australia has a long road to travel insuring the Human Rights of all Australian's living with disability have all their basic Human Rights meet. Even in Australia people living with disability are three to four times likely to be living below the poverty live, have little say about their residential address, are denied basic medical treatment on the bases they are already disabled, 1 in 3 women with disability experience some form of sexual assault with is higher among women living in residential care and most preputaters are male staff.           

This is a no frills approach to disability care. 

• No choice in meal times
• Little choice in what they eat.
• Set shower times
•   Clothing chosen for them
• Set activities

These are major breeches in the UN's charter to Human Rights. Breeches that could cost Australian its position on the security council.  Other issues include better access to the community, transport, education, skills development, full employment and  equal pay issues.  It is undeniable that Australians with disabilities continue to have restricted choices and at high risk of abuse from those who care for them.   

Hearings and reports to the UN have recently taken place. On blog Action Day I am going to tell you some person stories of breeches I know of in terms of Humane Rights.