The field of disability services and advocacy is changing. One of the most significant shifts over the last few decades has been the rising prominence of actual disabled people within the disability field. While this is a positive development overall, it should prompt non-disabled people interested in serving disabled people to rethink their position and approach.
As a proud person with a disability, El Gibbs has spent her career communicating and amplifying the voices of the disability community during times of crisis and triumph. She’s this week’s Changemaker.
DARU courses are designed primarily for advocates working within funded disability advocacy organisations to supports skill development for providing human rights based advocacy practice. However everyone is welcome to give them a go. The courses are: Available online free of charge Structured with self paced modules that you can complete at your convenience unaccredited but … Continued
Eleanor Beidatsch has a passion for palaeontology, but that’s not as strong as her passion to see more people with disability accepted and succeeding in the sciences. “When I look around a room, I don’t often see anybody else like me. In all the time I’ve been at university I’ve never seen another student in a wheelchair and I’ve seen only a couple with other sorts of disabilities. It can get lonely sometimes.”
Research has shown that the biggest barriers people with disabilities face are the negative and limiting attitudes held by the general community. This is something the Attitude Foundation has decided to tackle head on.
“But the impact of the pandemic on many people with disability, especially those with high support needs, would have been significantly ameliorated if the Australian government had complied fully with the letter and spirit of its obligations under the [UN convention] from the very outset of the pandemic.”
In a confronting and honest story, the ABCs disability affairs reporter Nas Campanella tells how she’s been told she shouldn’t exist because of her disability. She’s sharing the story to mark the ABC’s week of coverage to mark International Day for People with Disability, designed to increase public awareness, understanding and acceptance of people with disability.
The new series of The Crown is extraordinary in two ways. Not only does the storyline include Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon, the Queen’s cousins who both had a learning disability, but it has also cast actors with a learning disability in those parts.
Many people experience hearing loss – from mild to disabling – but COVID-19 face masks are making communication even harder for people with hearing impairment
“I just thought, stuff it, I’m going to just employ people with disabilities top to bottom and show how good they can be within a workplace,” Alcott said. “We’re not doing this for CSR and we’re not doing it to do the right thing. We’re doing it because people with disabilities are bloody good employees.”
Finding a job can be difficult, and if you have a disability it’s even harder because of persistent workplace discrimination. But people with a disability are increasingly taking control of their own lives, building their entrepreneurial skills and establishing their own enterprises.
Social connectedness and the ability to speak up for oneself is the most important safeguard against abuse and neglect. It is tragic that it has taken with the death of Ann-Marie Smith to make this abundantly clear.
Far too many people with a disability are denied choices about their accommodation, often leading to neglect and abuse, a royal commission says. It said a shift from large housing complexes to smaller group homes had not eliminated institutional forms of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation.
Our world is inscribed with expectations about who we are. (And the reader should prepare themselves, here, for some physical metaphors; they have long since become ableism’s handy go-to.)
Is the disability support sector due for a shake-up? Social entrepreneur and product designer Melanie Tran wants to disrupt traditional models of support. And she’s helping bring together young people from around the country to help make that happen.