Sexual and reproductive rights are inherent entitlements of every being, regardless of gender or disability. However, the right to parenthood is particularly precarious for people with disability in Australia.
A popular topic that came up in the Q&A at the Advocating for your child in the NDIS appeals process event held on 15 May 2023 as part of Victorian Law Week, , was how to prepare a “Parents’ Statement of Lived Experience” in a child’s NDIS funding dispute (review application) at the Administrative Appeal Tribunal (AAT). Here’s 10 tips to get you started…
Students with disability and transport are the main winners in this year’s budget. $235 million will go towards students with disability and their families, along with expanding out of school hours care availability to accommodate their needs. For Victorians that are unable or unwilling to drive, $190 million will be used to cap public transport fares at the metro rate. A further $601 million will be spent to build 23 VLocity trains, and $219 million will go towards morel V-Line services, including extra weekend services on major regional train lines. Similarly, $32 million will be set aside for the Students with Disabilities Transport Program, which provides transport assistance for students with disability to attend specialist schools.
‘It’s vital we teach the next generation about disability history’
Disability rights should be part of the curriculum so that all children learn about it and all disabled people can see themselves represented.
Curbing disability discrimination in the workplace is everyone’s responsibility. And it’s unfair, though all too common, to place all of the burden on people with disabilities to absorb, defuse, or fight disability discrimination themselves. But what can people with disabilities do to prepare themselves for possible – and unfortunately probable – workplace discrimination?
“Disability is a part of the rich tapestry of human diversity, and something that nearly all of us will experience at some point in our lives,” explains Jackie Dilworth. “It’s also a significant identity that defines how we experience the world. Yet people with disabilities have been marginalised and misunderstood for generations.”
But none tried to pose the reality before me bravely and empower me for the future. Even the doctors in my family failed to predict the complications, difficulties and challenges ensuing from this accident. The most difficult part I feel is identifying oneself as disabled and shifting your habits, ways and lifestyle from pre-disability to the post life.
I am working with colleagues to provide a means for students with disabilities and their educational teams to understand the impact of fatigue, to advocate for appropriate strategies and programs and to moderate fatigue in educational contexts.
My midwife Cherie Desreaux and her team had decades of midwifery experience but they’d never cared for a mum with disability. They didn’t know how to navigate this journey but they were confident together we’d figure it out.
People on the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) are missing out on the services they require due to a lack of approved providers, with the situation most acute in regional and rural areas. Newly compiled data from the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations has mapped the number of scheme participants by region, their average budget, the number of service providers available and what portion of their budget is being spent.
As a practicing Occupational Therapist with a background in adult rehabilitation, Hana saw that clients using assistive technologies were unhappy with the impact the technology was having on their lives. She also realised that many assistive technologies do not meet the needs of clients and that there is an issue regarding lack of access and abandonment.
People with high-value National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) plans are being “kidnapped” and having their funding drained by providers that are supposed to help them live better lives, a bombshell report says.
There’s an implied link between medicine and disability. The assumption is that if you’re disabled enough to need support, you’ll have an expert team of medical professionals at your disposal to verify this. But people fall through the cracks of our healthcare system every day, unable to find specialists who understand what’s happening to their body. When this happens, they’re left to drown.
Victoria is lagging other countries by effectively excluding people who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind or have low vision from serving on juries. The state’s law reform commission is calling for an overhaul of the justice system to enable juries to be inclusive, a change it said was “well overdue”, in a report tabled in parliament on Tuesday.
Risks include restricting product selection or inadvertent market price fixing. It also means the government may wind up with a warehouse full of equipment waiting to be matched to a user, rather than the products scheme participants really require.