Posts by Hilary Stace
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MM was important for my generation because she was a single mother and a librarian and gave status to both.
It has been interesting in the tributes that she seemed to have visited every school and every library in NZ, and replied to every letter from every child. From what Tessa Duder said this morning on Nine to Noon she probably did.
My story is that when my daughter was young and very ill I wrote to MM after a book reading about how much it had cheered my daughter up. She sent back a package of assorted signed books, which have been treasured ever since.
I have just found the biography in the book shelf - next bedtime reading.
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Hard News: Good Intentions, in reply to Sacha,
I think Mainstream is basically a good programme because it was largely developed by disabled people, and it makes it relatively easy for all at the beginning by trying to build relationships. Employers/agencies etc have to create a new job and for that get a new employee, and provide a person to be the mentor for that person, and that mentor gets training; the employee gets independent employment support including training and peer support and all the stuff which goes with having a job (however few hours it is).
Where it breaks down is that it relies on people. There are not enough people in the Mainstream office to properly promote and monitor the programme - let alone evaluate it. The commitment of the mentor and the quality of the supported employment agency varies greatly - and problems can happen with staff changes when a supportive person is replaced by someone less so. The rest of the workplace might have an unhelpful culture and not want to learn how to be a bit more inclusive. The employer may have no interest in (or no ability or resources for) creating the ongoing job, and there doesn't seem any compliance requirement to do this.
But for a model it's not bad.
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Hard News: Good Intentions, in reply to Sacha,
Mainstream is a basically good programme but poorly resourced and thinly spread. Very few real sustainable jobs seem to be created following the two year subsidy, leaving those who started with such high hopes very disappointed. You can only access the programme once, and there is not much else available. This new initiative seems to be spreading it even more thinly - and could cynically be interpreted as giving the private sector yet another way to take government money - without any guarantee of long term benefits for the disabled unemployed person.
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Agree with everything you say, Russell.
By the way the Government's Mainstream supported employment programme has just been extended to the private sector, for organisations with more than 20 employees. Subsidised 100% the first year and less the second, with the idea it becomes a sustainable job. Can't find this level of detail on the msd website but here's an extract from the info letter just sent out:
Also from July 2012 we are focusing on a target group of young people and graduates. We have piloted these changes in the Auckland Region during the past year, and can now roll them out to the rest of the country.
The changes we are making are:
1. Private sector organisations with 20 or more employees are now eligible for the Programme.
2. We will be focusing on disabled young people aged 18 to 24 years, and graduates of any age.
3. A Mainstream Internship programme will be available for 15 current tertiary students.
While this change will increase the diversity of opportunities for candidates, we are still required to operate within the current budget. Expansion to the private sector will not necessarily increase the number of placements; however it will enable us to:
1. Improve workplace matching. As part of the Job Proposal process we will be looking for evidence that the particular job and company is likely to be a sustainable option for the participant, i.e. that they will either have a good chance of being able to be employed at the end of the two-year placement, or that they will be able to learn and grow sufficiently in the job to significantly increase their chances of employment elsewhere.
2. Focus on people with the greatest barriers, including youth with significant disabilities who need help to break into the workforce, and graduates who need help to gain positions where they can use their skills and knowledge.
3. Be more selective about where we place people, ensuring that the needs and aspirations of the participants are the primary deciding factor, and we make placements with employers who will enable a focus on the participant’s Career Development Plan.Please see the website www.mainstream.msd.govt.nz for more information, especially about the eligibility criteria for employers.
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Hard News: Open or not?, in reply to HORansome,
The shareholders are doing nicely. I think we are in the wrong part of the enterprise.
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From my perspective - as a occasional writer, and peer reviewer for academic journals - there is no money at all in academic publishing, in fact it costs as it takes away from time that could be spent on money making activities. Brave souls sometimes take on roles as guest editors (also unpaid) for whole issues and it seems to take a huge amount of time and work chasing up and tidying up articles, finding reviewers, copy editors, sorting publication issues etc all to impossible deadlines. It is disheartening, therefore, if all that work is only accessible to a limited audience.
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Hard News: Higgs Live!, in reply to Islander,
I was working at the Turnbull Library when he was researching his Te Puea book in the late 1970s. He seemed to be a very generous person always ready to help others with their research or prepared to engage on aspects of NZ history.
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Checked out the ice skating rink in the square in Palmerston North today. It looked like the one that was last in Wellington. It was packed with people on the ice (all ages) and watching. However, more interesting was a tree nearby with a plaque on the ground (I took a photo with my phone but it didn't come out very well) with the fading words
'This tree was planted by the people of Palmerston North on 8 November 1975 to celebrate the inauguration of our campaign to create an ideal society. When 5% of our population are practising the transcendental meditation technique of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, crime, sickness and unhappiness will disappear and the age of enlightenment will be established'.
Unfortunately, I don't think the good people of Palmerston North took up the opportunity.
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Not a physicist but just found this Youtube clip of my family's famous scientist - Bill Hamilton, evolutionary biologist - and my mother's cousin. This must have been filmed not long before he died in 2000 while in the field. (They do good hair in that line of the family.)
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A couple of weekends ago I was part of a team judging posters about clinical research. It is featured in the latest VicNews. As usual I borrowed a disability perspective. They had to be easy to read whether displayed high or low or in a dark corner; therefore contrast was important and a large clear font (sans serif easiest). A busy background was just distracting. Most of them had a 2 or 3 column approach - broken up in easy to read chunks and some included tables or graphs. The most effective had minimal use of colour - just one or two in addition to dark lettering on on a white background. Good use of illustration included smallish photos or diagrams such as of the specialist equipment used or procedures.
Once you have done all this it is quite easy to read and more or less understand even the most complex scientific/clinical project. These ones all had human research participants, and for me that means there is almost an ethical requirement to make the information accessible, even for a specialist conference.