Dreaming of Possibilities

Deb's Rave!

The hopes and dreams that the National Disability Insurance Scheme will bring for people living with disabilities and those who provide unpaid care, seems to balance on a uneven seesaw. What I am beginning to see emerge is that different agreements that have between different states and territories, and the Federal Government, sees a different approach to disability care, being adopted around the country.  A reality I find disheartening, when the principle underlying the NDIS campaign was a universal approach to supporting people living with disability and greater access to choice regardless of whether people live in Hobart Tassimia or Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.  

So the anticipated mistrust of governments ability to deliver a disability support system that people living with disability and their families, unpaid careers and those who seek to support them on a daily basis were well-grounded. 

What was known from the outset, under the recommendation of the productivity report, was there was to be a nation wide shake-up to the eligibility criteria . With the promised the more people with disabilities and their primary careers would be eligible for support and the state-by-state regulations on supported career and accommodation would cease with individuals and families to be offered greater choice and flexibility in the way the receive that support.  That was the very essences of the National Disability Insurance Scheme campaign, a principle that disability advocates will not be negotiating.

The scheme must deliver a universal approach to supporting those living with disabilities and those who career for them.  In the push towards early intervention, fostering independence, the needs of families and those who care for them seems forgotten.  Loss in the former labor governments push towards priorities such as employment.    

While I cheer on reform that is founded on social inclusion, real employment opportunities and equality, these much not be at the expense of providing esscentual respite care and providing support to the family unit the live with  24 hours needs of a love one.  Everyone has a breaking point and everyone needs a brake and end to residential respite does not provide that break.

No one wants separation in any form but the reality is that unpaid career like every other Australian, has a right to annual leave.  The absence of being paid does not remove need.  We can debate all we like about what people with liabilities need, what the like, how to define choice, how do we create choice, how do people with disabilities make informed choices after a lifetime with out choosing basic things like the color of their toothbrush, what they want for lunch and what the will wear on any given day.  

As we face the road to a fully operational National Disability Insurance Scheme that delivers full equality to people living with disability and their significant others the challenges to ensure everyone has the same degree of choice regardless of type of disability, lifestyle and postcode are enormous!

The principles of the National Disability Insurance Scheme are not as secured as various governments have assured us.  We as the voice of those who can not speak must not be silence or rest. The right to choice must be secured for every Australia. Every Australian has the humane right to have their rights meet. 

Disability Care Australia (NDIS) the first step towards full social inclusion

Exploring possibilities

The introduction of Disability Care Australia is a revolutionary concept that is designed to encourage and enable greater community inclusion of people with a disability.  Through the promotion of individual choice and the first real opportunity for people with significant disability and their families to have self-direction for their life based on their own hopes and dreams for the future. It is hoped where feasible people with disabilities will engaged in all aspects of community life give the right early intervention and support systems in their lives.

This is a move away from traditional values and attitudes that have previously seen people with disabilities  become isolated in their community either through disability or the time commitments involved in caring for a family member who has a significant disability meaning even family members have been excluded and isolated.

As we walk towards the implementation of Disability Care Australia previously known as the NDIS the challenges before us are great.  However our biggest challenge before us is to change the way we limit and define what is possible for a child or adult with disabilities, we in the past our expectations have been low and very limiting.

Along with improving physical access to buildings, the workplace and public transport we to need to see a major shift in attitudes towards people with disabilities and the inclusion of their families. If our attitudes, especially those of us who work in the disability sector are not challenged and expanded than the hopes and dreams of thousands of NDIS campaigners will be lost at we stand a the precepts of a revolution to ensure the social inclusion of people with disabilities.

This includes one of the biggest challenges for us, employment. People with disabilities tell us they want to work, however at the same time they have the right to meaningful employment and fair wages, not just the type of employment opportunities offered by sheltered workshops in the past.  Working towards full inclusion will require us to expand our horizons of what is possible even in the workplace and even force us to look for alternative ways to achieve our goals and work results, as seen in this story. 

 ABC journalist breaking new ground - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation):

'via Blog this'

I personal believe we have much to learn about ourselves, our attitudes and the self determination of people with disability and their families before earn even begin to let go of out previously preconceptions of what is possible and deactivated this inbuilt tendency to overprotect those with disabilities.  

Let us be excited about the possibilities tomorrow can bring . 

Choices creating possibilities!

Young man with Autism Graduates 

with his Masters!

It's a statement I hear often, It is not our disabilities that limit us, rather attitude and the attitudes of those around us. The change that has urushered in a new system of Disability Care in Australia, is on of the biggest shift in thinking Australia has even gone.  It requires a shift in thinking . . . and shift in attitude.

On July in 5 trail sites around Australia the doors to Disability Care Australia will open for the first time.  For the first time people with disabilities  the families and adult graudin will be given choices about the way the want the support needs to be meet. While Disability Care Australia will see in real injection of funding to meet the unmet needs of 10, 000's  of people living with primate serve disability, it also aims to 'revoluationalised  the way we have historically thought of disability and how we have 'cared' for these people.

Often during these debates I have heard these people refer to as 'the most vulnerable members of our community. Our ingrain first reaction and need to protect these individuals with disabilities is very strong. I living with a disability know first hand their are many people in our society ready to take advantaged of those who are traditionally viewed as having a weakness.  Sadly there is an element in our society that will exploit anyone with any type or weakness and we do not have to have a disability to fall pray to these people.  Our expressions tell powerfully stories of how we view people with disabilities and labeling them as being the most vulnerable people in the community, makes a powerful statement for protection.

However these statements and therefore judgments are made on traditional and historical views of people with disabilities. Historically people with disability and their families were isolated from their community. They were not given opportunities to be educated or seek employment.  No one challenge that their was more that one way people could play tennis and ruby.  People who need to mobilize in wheelchairs and artiphical limbs now compete on an international playing field.  My friends playing powerchair rub is a new normal even for me!

So as we march towards a new era in Disability Care we need as a society openly acknowledge that we need to work together to extend the bounds of "possibilities".  People with intellectual and sensory disabilities are now guarduating from high school and going on to territory education.  People of equal education levels should not been label 'vulnerable' on the bases of diagnoses along. 

Thus the first change we will see under Disability Care Australia is a shift in the way people with disabilities and their families are assessed.  Not longer will we ask what a person can't do, we will ask what the person who like to do or about the 'dreams' parents have for their children.  Even our fundamental assessment tools have contributed to the undervaluing of people with disabilities.  So in order to make these major changes and see a true enrichment in the lives of people with disabilities, their families and those who care for them we need to choose to ask smarter questions.  It a child with Cerebral Palsy has intensive physio is it possible the may be able to walk?  Not can your child walk?  

Hopefully as we shift the way we make our assessments and the way we define what is possible. Our natural insticts to protect to people with disabilities will decline and we will be willing to lossing the  puppet stings enough to give people real choice and real direction over their lives.

As my regular readers know to give people choices means we need to accept that some people with disabilities and some family members will make poor choices resulting in people being harmed in same way people chose to smoke.  To give people real choices means the person making the choice is responsible for the results good or bad.

One I the things that will leader to greater acceptance of choice is to begin now to ask ourselves, is it possible that my son or daughter could live independently in the community if they were given the right support.  It is only after we ask 'what is possible' when can then ask how do we make this possible, what are the right type of supports for 'my child'.  What does my child need help with to get out of bed ans to arrive at TAFE/work or the day centre on time?

To get the right answers, we need to learn how to ask the right questions.  To do this me need time to allow ourselves to explore possibilities that have never been there before. Need possibilities because of better supports, advances in medicine and technology, shifting in attitudes and more access to education and early intervention programs.

The first step we can take in this journey together is today.  Today we can start to change the question we are asking ourselves and service providers.  Today we can begin to ask what it possible given the opportunity to make different choice.  What could our future look like.  So when we reach our turn to switch to Disability Care Australia or be assess we already know the possibilities we want to make real!  Are you ready . . .  ?