Posted May 7, 2020
Homeschooling is difficult enough for most families, but parents of students with disabilities say they urgently need more support to help educate their kids. Fiona Sharkie, CEO of Victorian peak body for autism Amaze, said students with disabilities and their families had been forced to scramble for their own solutions to homeschooling. “The silence is really deafening from the [Education] Department,” she said.
Posted April 28, 2020
The coronavirus pandemic is keeping us at home due to widespread unemployment, school closures and social distancing. This has already led to concerns about an upsurge in domestic and family violence.
Posted March 24, 2020
Disability advocates say governments across Australia need to better communicate their plans for at-risk groups. A survey of over 200 families by the Australian Coalition for Inclusive Education (ACIE) and Children and Young People with Disability Australia (CYDA) found that COVID-19 was causing havoc and fear for the disability community.
Posted March 20, 2020
People with disabilities have had their national disability insurance scheme and other support services cancelled and been unable to get essential medication and supplies during the coronavirus outbreak, according to a survey by peak bodies in the sector.
Posted February 21, 2020
Frustrated doctors have admitted to cutting corners to ensure children with disabilities can access government funding sooner.
Posted February 14, 2020
Children with developmental delays such as autism have become the victims of postcode discrimination, with some in poorer suburbs waiting hundreds of days for the crucial diagnosis often needed to access the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). An ABC investigation has exposed how a child’s access to early intervention therapies under the multi-billion-dollar scheme can depend on where they live, in what some are describing as “developmental apartheid”.
Posted October 18, 2019
For the past five years, the National Disability Insurance Agency has squabbled with state governments over who pays to support children with a profound disability. In that time, hundreds of families have been pushed to the brink. The care they were promised never came.
Posted September 20, 2019
Women’s reproductive rights are a tough enough topic for any female-identifying person in the 21st century. For the disability community though, they raise a whole different set of issues.
Posted May 14, 2019
Having a disability and being in a relationship can be complex. However, most of those complexities come from the assumptions of other people. This podcast series explores these complexities.
Audio and full transcript available.
Posted May 10, 2019
Children with high-needs disabilities are living in child protection because their parents can no longer look longer after them, with advocates blaming a lack of support from the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) for forcing parents to give up their children.
Posted April 12, 2019
Advocacy groups representing migrants and refugees in Australia have sent a letter to Immigration Minister David Coleman questioning the legitimacy of the decision to refuse a Bhutanese family permanent residency on the basis of their son’s disability.
Posted October 31, 2018
We’ve Got This: Parenting with a Disability is a new ABC radio series produced by Eliza Hull. Eliza has a neurological condition ‘Charcot Marie Tooth’, and she’s the ABC’s 2018 Regional Storyteller Scholarship recipient.
Posted October 19, 2018
Positive Powerful Parents is a self advocacy group for parents with intellectual disability. Last month they hosted a parent meeting. 17 parents with intellectual disability from all over Victoria were in attendance, attached is a report from the day.
Posted August 17, 2018
“Children with disabilities are among the most marginalised groups in society. If society continues to see the disability before it sees the child, the risk of exclusion and discrimination remains,” Georgina Thompson, a media consultant for UNICEF, told IPS.
Posted July 23, 2018
When Nicole Lee’s husband was removed from her home after she disclosed a decade of abuse to hospital staff following a suicide attempt, it took her eight weeks to get a shower.
