Posts by Rosemary McDonald
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Access: Your Relationship With Disability, in reply to Hilary Stace,
have you seen the latest Disability Action Plan from the Office for Disability Issues? Directly responding to the CRPD obligations
YES!!!! We are on the road at the moment….being much cheaper living in our housebus than living in our home. Enjoying an evening of free wifi….so catching up with the latest. The NEW DAP…what can I say…. what a crock.
When will they stop publishing such garbage? Does anyone actually believe a word of this rubbish? Same shit different dates.
Love what Whaea Tariana was waffling on about…’’disabled New Zealanders enjoying the same rights as others’’….has she forgotten 17th May 2013????
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Access: Your Relationship With Disability, in reply to JacksonP,
my mum was very close friends with Eve Rimmer. She taught me a lot about the world in general, and living with disability in particular.
Peter and I opened and closed our submission on the Family Carers Consultation with quotes from Eve's book...."No Grass between my toes."
“(Mum) took the view that things wouldn’t happen if she waited for the committee’s approval. ...She acted. In her view - and I agree - committees are often the burial ground of the best of intentions.”
“But I came to the horrifying discovery quite early in the struggle that the more independent you are, the more independent you might have to be because if you ever get to the stage where you need aid nobody will believe it. “ 1978.
One wise woman.
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Access: Your Relationship With Disability, in reply to Angela Hart,
E Like Rosemary I choose to support a family member who needs significant care because it's the best and safest option for us. These days I'm paid under Funded Family Care but it stinks that Rosemary isn't. Similar need, similar circumstances, legalised discrimination against spouses and partners. UNFAIR!
Thank you Angela.
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(A) after reading about Temple Grandin today....but not really a disability.
(B) My partner is a high tetraplegic (pre ACC)'
(C)Quite a number of friends/acquaintances live with impairment/disability.
(D)When I was in paid work...yes.
(E)Hmm! as an unpaid family carer...also our family provided respite care for many disabled children over the years. I used to get paid as a carer, in a former life...
(F)Of course I have studied disability...how could I not? But, not formally...but some of my best friends....
PS Sacha....what a good idea!!!! -
Speaker: Let's talk about class, in reply to Di White,
the left, and the politically aware and articulate have been part of that agitation -- I would argue they have not.
Methinks, perhaps, these people are suffering from outrage overload.
Or simply resigned to the fact that that is just how it is.
As for discussions about "class"....are New Zealanders allowed to have such conversations?
Are not many of us actual, or decendants of, refugees from the class obsessed UK?. Don't we like to think we are an egalitarian society?
Elderly friends, in their eighties, living in a comfortable retirement complex run by the "notorious for its slack care standards" Ryman. Elderly couple...if I were applying the same UK class distinctions I was raised on, are definately 'working class'. Hard workers, hard savers.
In a discussion about the poor care in the residential arm of Ryman, I brought up about the low pay and poor working conditions of the care workforce. Elderly friend said "Oh, but they seem so nice and happy!". She did, however, observe that most of the workers were from the Phillipines. I gently explained that the work they have to do for the rate of pay makes it an untenable job for many New Zealanders. "Oh, yes! she agreed, .."but they are used to living on practically nothing."
As if that makes the shit pay okay.
Maybe this is an indication that we have matured as nation?
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Speaker: Let's talk about class, in reply to Russell Brown,
(Although, as someone with a close interest in disability issues, I feel slightly allergic to the word "ableism".)
Seriously needs discussion Russell.
Another post, perhaps????
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Diane, my only memory of my paternal grandfather is of him paralysed and bedridden after a pitfall in the coalmine he worked in some years before I was born.
So every mining disaster triggers an automatic response of fear, grief, anger and a deep empathy for the families of those lost. It is in my genes...the wait at the pit head for news from below, the anguish as bodies are retrieved, the despair at realising that some will never come back unless more lives are put at risk.
I also can understand the soul destroying realisation when the 'system' fails utterly to hold anyone accountable for yet another tragedy.
I watched as those families ran the gauntlet of cameras to participate in the 'process' of the Inquiry, hoping that by participating, something meaningful would eventuate.
It didn't. For all the usual reasons. Other commentors have covered most of them.
Perhaps there was little response from your usual followers, but others, maybe a little less removed from the coalface, were and still are outraged.
Where do we direct that outrage?
The ballot box?
Civil unrest?
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OnPoint: Budget 2014: Yeah okay., in reply to Keir Leslie,
Also, if you work for MoH you can't respond to people slagging you off
You can, however, investigate them and charge them with 'fraud' for doing what a bureaucrat/civil servant suggested in order to access much needed funding for disability suports.
Or, you can, after letters and a phone call, contact a complainers NASC, resulting in a fifty per cent reduction in the already minimal supports allocated.
Now THAT really knocked the wind out of us.
For a while.
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OnPoint: Budget 2014: Yeah okay., in reply to nzlemming,
They are people, just like you and me.
No they are not. Well, not me.
I do not lie. I do not intentionally mislead. I do, and have not, compromised my sense of honour( archaic notion, I know) for the sake of a large number of dollars dropping into my bank account on a regular basis.
I would not encourage a disabled person to be 'creative' in order to access the funding allocated for their care...because the 'legitimate' avenues simply would not work, indeed would be unsafe in their situation.
I would, as a civil servant, (whether directly employed by the Ministry of Health, or working for a contracted provider) inform the Ministry in no uncertain terms that some policies do not work. That some policies are harming disabled people and causing stress, anxiety and severe financial disadvantage. I would also tell my bosses that there are laws and policies...and then there is the REAL world...where many of those laws and policies are harming the very people we are being paid to provide supports to.
Yes, I have spoken to a number of these civil servants. This is after 'having a go' at the minister, the other minister, the no.1 minister and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all...who have all sent me back to the civil servants. Who are so addicted to their income they have refused to help. There are some of these bureaucrats...and yes I have spoken with them face to face...who simply do not have the required knowledge about, nor understanding of, the realities of living with a significant impairment. Their ignorance and arrogance are breathtaking.
If you have nothing better to do...have a look at the leaders of NGOs, provider organisations, monitoring and auditing companies,...a preponderance of ex MOH bureaucrats....They take care of their own.
And yes...I know some of those bureaucrats have lied. Unfortunately, the very real climate of fear the Ministry of Health Disability Support Services has created in sections of the disabled community has resulted in disabled being too frightened to speak out when they know injustice is rife in the system.
If I am outspoken...it is simply because I have nothing further to lose. And...I didn't do a backdoor deal so I could be paid for the disability care I provide.
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OnPoint: Budget 2014: Yeah okay., in reply to nzlemming,
Having had conversations with some of those very bureaucrats
And of course those bureaucrats were being honest? Yeah, right.
On the issue of paying family carers...Tony Ryall was repeatedly spouting the same rhetoric and profferring the identical flawed data that was presented to the HRRT by Crown Law on behalf of the MOH....back in 2008...before the flag changed over the Beehive.
Most of that flawed data had been generated by the Ministry from its so called records from the previous five years or so. All under Labour.The current predominant method of accessing disability support services through MOH:DSS is still the same as the system entrenched under Labour.
I felt so sorry for Tony Ryall back in June 2012 when he was clearly talking through the proverbial on this issue...suggesting that he was starting to look a bit of a dick(not in those words exactly...but you get the drift)...spouting figures that had already been debunked.
I am sure it was NOT because of my 'friendly' email...which I have no doubt he did not read...but I bet one of his entourage actually did check...cause the 'numbers' (of unpaid family carers now demanding to be paid) started to come down.