Supported decision-making needs to be implemented across all sectors to ensure people with cognitive disability are empowered to make their own choices, says a new report commissioned by the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability.
Ending violence against people with disability requires a detailed plan on how we make housing, education, health and transport equal for us. So it brings me great sadness as a disability rights campaigner to say the royal commission into violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of people with disability currently looks unlikely to join the list of royal commissions that change the country.
The irony was not lost on Ms Rooble that, on her way to the inquiry, the lift at Melbourne’s Southern Cross station was out of order and she almost didn’t make it.
A disabled Bangladeshi refugee has told the Disability Royal Commission he often went hungry during his detention on Nauru because he was unable to stand in the food line for hours.
A woman of short stature has told an inquiry she is abused and harassed by strangers once a month on average, with people calling her names, laughing at her, taking videos without consent and even sexually assaulting her.
The witnesses will describe incidents of harassment, verbal abuse, physical assault and threatening behaviour across a range of settings, including on the street, on public transport, and online platforms.
On any night there’s an estimated 116,000 homeless people in Australia and the majority of them have a disability. “Having nowhere to go after hospitalisation … that’s one of the difficulties I faced,” she said. “You just feel nothing, you’ve got nowhere to go, you don’t really have the ability or the finance to feel anything, so it’s nothingness.
A mother resorted to rummaging through a rubbish tip to find spare parts for her daughter’s wheelchair, the disability royal commission was told this week. The First Nations woman was among many in remote communities who spoke of trying to navigate a system with no “cultural competence”.
The head of the First Persons Disability Network, Damian Griffis, said Indigenous people with a disability should be supported to stay in their own communities. He advocated providing training to people in the community, rather than fly-in, fly-out health-care models, because it would be more beneficial and cost-effective.
The market-based model relies on funding for disabled people’s care driving the growth of service provision, Northern Territory Public Guardian Beth Walker told the disability inquiry on Tuesday. “The market has not responded and so people’s needs are not being fully met because of the lack of availability of services,” she said at the hearing in Alice Springs on Tuesday.
Among the witnesses was a Warumungu woman, Daisy*, whose three children include 18-year-old Joziah, who lives with quadriplegia and dysphagia. While Daisy lives in Tennant Creek, Joziah now lives 500km away in Alice Springs, because he was unable to access the support he needed – such as speech therapy and physiotherapy – in the family’s home town.
The Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability has turned its attention to the treatment and experiences of thousands of Indigenous people with disabilities in remote communities.
But Ms Sayers argues separating students into mainstream and special schools is “a form of segregation”, as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. “We need to be transforming our education system so that all students are included alongside their non-disabled peers in education,” she said.
Testimony to the disability royal commission this week described a culture in which people were “seen as a dollar figure” and in which management and staff did not report serious incidents.
Proud Indigenous man Thomas Marks tells his story of being Stolen Gen, incarceration and turning his life around through art. This is his story told in his own words for the Disability Royal Commission.