Page 3984 - Week 11 - Thursday, 26 September 2019
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I look forward to working with my colleagues to address the systemic challenges that contribute to loneliness amongst Canberrans, particularly those with a disability. I believe that a lack of disability awareness contributes to the challenges faced by people with disability in meaningfully participating in the wider community. People with disability may often feel excluded from community, work and social events when thought is not given to accessibility. A lack of accessible information formats, as well being excluded from information sharing, can mean that people with disability are unaware of events.
When physical accessibility to a particular venue is not communicated, people with disability may not feel welcomed to attend events, even when they know about them. A flight of stairs or a step into a venue may mean the difference between a person with disability being able to attend or not attend an event. Sometimes people without disability do not know how to interact with people with disability, so they ignore or avoid them. Sadly, sometimes exclusion can also be a deliberate choice.
Inclusion and equity are cornerstone values of the ACT government, as our vision is for the ACT to be an inclusive, welcoming society where everyone has the opportunity to fully participate in the social, cultural and economic life of our community. I am committed to working towards ensuring that Canberra is a more inclusive community and improving outcomes for people with disability in employment, justice, housing, health and education, and supporting the implementation of the national disability insurance scheme, the NDIS.
We are proud in the ACT that we are continuing to support people with disability, and their families and carers, with greater control to respond to their support needs and greater certainty that the funding will be there to ensure that their care and support needs are met through the NDIS. The ACT government has committed over $716 million to the NDIS and will continue to advocate, through the commonwealth government, that the NDIS be fully funded and resourced to deliver on its promise of social inclusion for people with disability.
An important component of the NDIS is the information, linkages and capacity building stream of the scheme. ILC, as it is more commonly referred to, aims to achieve the following outcomes so that people with disability have the knowledge, skills and confidence to participate and contribute to the community; are connected and have the information they need to make choices and decisions; are able to use and benefit from the same mainstream services as everyone else; are able to use and benefit from the same community activities as everyone else; and can actively contribute to leading, shaping and influencing their community. We will continue to work with the commonwealth government to ensure that people with disability in the ACT benefit from these outcomes.
It is interesting to note that the United Kingdom is working to ensure that loneliness is acted upon as a public health priority at all levels. In October 2018 the government launched its loneliness strategy and appointed a new minister for loneliness to coordinate government action to address what they are calling the loneliness epidemic.
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