So, this has been a difficult one to think about and process as this week has been difficult for me due to the fact that my parents have been ill, and we have had to keep their business running. As well as keeping my own commitments up and running this is a challenge and it goes into functionality in disability, so there has been in the past a prevailing thought about disability that we can be spoken for and to.
Even though the NDIS has come through we see that it does have issues, as it is supposed to be around the person's level of function but it's not really as we saw when they brought the list of conditions in the people had to have a diagnosis to receive a NDIS package.
This was actually an unintended consequence of the list that defined what could qualify for NDIS support and it has made it difficult to get support threw the NDIS, when it was supposed to make it easier for family and friends but unfortunately support services are very much stuck in a medical model of support as well.
So this is a start of Gatekeeping in disability, everyone has their own thoughts on gatekeeping in disability, but we see that the reality is that the disability community is the only minority community that anyone can become a part of at any time and we see that this is an issue, due to people not knowing how to cope with becoming disabled and family and friends not knowing how to deal with the person becoming disabled or not knowing how to support the person. Or becoming overbearing to the person and not letting the person go at their own pace or even deciding what is in the best interest of the person without talking to the people involved.
So I just realized that I have put the horse before the Cart and not explained what is Gatekeeping in disability, but it is when someone who isn't disabled or works with a disability decider's what disability is due to them being around disability longer or in the paid sector longer. This actually sometimes can prevent people from getting the help that they need to function due to the fact that they don't see themselves as disabled but they are, we see that there is a cultural expectation that people with disabilities are either high achievers or that they are on the pension, however, this couldn't be further from the truth due to the fact that some people with disabilities are able to work and due to the internet and platforms like Patreon we see that the way that disability is portrayed is changing due to the simple fact that people can speak up now.
I admit that this is challenging for support providers but we see that the culture around disability needs to change due to the fact that people with a disability are people first and have a varying level of function, and ability to interact with the world at large. Some really enjoy day centers and get a lot of enjoyment from them, I don't as a service user but I see the benefit of them in a massive way at times.
However, this judgment of disabilities has come at a massive social cost due to the fact that some people have to live with their parents and that the pension in Australia isn't a lot of money to live on,
However, we see that there is the start of some cultural change with the appointment of Kurt Furney as chair of the NDIS and this is great as we recently have seen people who are in the NDIA being treated very poorly due to having physical disabilities I do remember the WA minister that has disabilities not "feeling," disabled until he needed to fly somewhere for a meeting and he saw how the average person with a disability was put into a box by transport companies.
I do see that there is going to be some pushback due to the fact that some service providers don't like to see that they have an issue and the changes will have to be pushed onto them due to the fact that they do employ a lot of people but the service providers do seem to be concentrated in Australia around regional and Capital cites. I do remember being a big gobsmacked when I asked the question on Quora about what could be done and someone suggested that they just move to where the service providers were.
This was another form of gatekeeping and we see that it's a massive issue that people think that it's not their problem until someone they know becomes disabled and this then makes them wake up to the issues. I know that I am very late to the party in disability awareness but the disability community in my part of the world doesn't seem open to new ideas, this unfortunately is very common as well.
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