Page 3829 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 24 August 2011
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All people with disabilities achieve what they want to achieve, live how they choose to live, and are valued as full and equal members of the ACT community …
This is the vision that you outline, Mr Hargreaves. The vision has six strategic priorities. The first is:
I want the right support, right time, right place …
They do not pick the time and the place. They do not pick whether they only want support at home, at work or at school. All of those areas are important and people are drastically short-changed by this government and by the attitude that Mr Hargreaves displayed a few minutes ago. Point two of that vision is “I want to contribute to the community”. Point three is “I want to socialise and engage in the community”. Point four is “I want to know what I need to know”. Point five is “I want to tell my story once”. Point six is “I want a quality service system”. That was two years ago. Yes, there has been some progress, but not enough and it has been slow.
I listen to the disability community often and listen to the many self-help groups that have been formed as parents with incredible burdens who are trying to cope and support each other through the lessons they have learned over the years. Two weeks ago, I was invited to meet with the P&C association of a special school and listened to a very emotional group of parents as they articulated a great number of their concerns.
These concerns are current and very real, Mr Hargreaves. They include concerns about the lack of therapy services at special schools; lack of after-school care services at all special schools; lack of decent post-school options for students with special needs; and lack of supported accommodation options. They include concerns about poor respite services. Obtaining access to respite is difficult, and finding quality respite workers is even harder. And there is anger and fear about the lowering of the school leaving age, done without any consultation at all.
These parents also suggested that we the politicians, as their representatives, need to better understand what caring is like and the impact that a disabled child has on a family, especially a disabled child with high care needs. They asked me, and I have made this invitation before in this chamber, to invite all of the members of this Assembly from all parties—all of us—to come out, visit their schools and experience for ourselves what it is like for them: for the children, their teachers, their families and their carers.
As harsh and as blunt as the comments from the Productivity Commission were, and as idealistic and optimistic the future direction might be, we have to recognise that it does not all go away or get better with commission findings or aspirational strategies. The strategy is one thing; improving conditions at the coalface is quite another. We need to be better focused on outcomes than we currently are.
The Productivity Commission recognised all those concerns and proposed a national disability insurance scheme. The report sets out clearly its costs, its benefits and a timetable for implementation. While the federal government has committed
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