Carers

Sam Paior is a parent of two kids with disabilities. She is a staunch advocate for people with a disability and their families, and is a board member of IDASA (Intellectual Disability Association of SA) and founder of Parents Helping Parents.

As one of the two in five Australians who have a disability, care for someone who does, or both, the NDIS, the National Disability Insurance Scheme has been, to date the opposite of a death by a thousand cuts for me.

The Scheme is kinda like a Medicare for services and equipment related to disability. A scheme where people who need a disability related service, equipment or support can get what they need. With Medicare, you might see a doctor (of your choice) and then pick up your antibiotic prescription (at a pharmacy of your choice), and when a blind person needs a white cane, or an intellectually disabled person needs someone to feed them, it should be just as simple, but it’s not.

Medicare is funded with a levy, but the Productivity Commission, who state that such a scheme for the disabled will self fund within five years, say the funds should come from general revenue.

Continue reading "Finally, a victory for disabled families" »

This week The Punch features two Angry Cripples, both anonymous. It’s fair to say they have somewhat opposing points of view to say the least. We recommend reading this one first.

I am an angry cripple. No, I do not have a disability, but as the mother of a young woman with severe and multiple disabilities, I am as crippled by the cruel Australian disability support system as much as – and sometimes more than - many people with a disability themselves.

I have been the sole primary carer of my daughter since my divorce more than 20 years ago, with the result that - like hundreds of thousands of other sole primary carers - I subsist on the poverty line.

During the global financial crisis, when the government was throwing cash at families earning up to $110,000 a year and the widescreen TVs and handbags were rolling out shop doors, I looked at my life, my old and decrepit furniture, my second hand clothes and all the things about my health and life that desperately need work but which I have not been able to attend to because of lack of support services and/or my inability to pay.

Continue reading "Punch: If you think disability is bad, try full-time caring" »

“He…did not battle his illness bravely. Nor was he courageous in the face of death,” read the bold, opening paragraph of the obituary for the British journalist. John Diamond, a man almost as famous for his ten-year marriage to celebrity Nigella Lawson as the long and public battle with throat cancer that he lost in March 2001.

It was a fitting tribute. Diamond adamantly refused to fight his battle with cancer “bravely” and chose instead to write about his illness, in a raw and unforgiving fashion, in a weekly column for The Times newspaper in London.

Honesty was his only policy, as the quote below the fold reveals.

Continue reading "Don’t tell me I look good when I’m sick and miserable" »

A couple of Sundays ago in Port Moresby, Stephanie Copus-Campbell – the head of AusAID’s program in PNG – invited me and a colleague to accompany her on a regular Sunday activity.

Every Sunday, Stephanie goes to the local supermarket and buys $70 worth of oranges which she then takes to the AIDS ward at the Port Moresby hospital.

HIV infection rates are high in PNG and while antiretroviral drugs are available, people still come to this place to die.

Continue reading "Touched by the angel of the PNG AIDS ward" »

Given the vigorous responses to last week’s column by Sue O’Reilly, when The Angry Cripple heard that Todd Winther was writing a response to run on the ABC’s Ramp Up website, the AC asked him if we could run it too. The Punch is running his column under Todd’s own byline rather than the Angry Cripple’s byline for reasons that will become clear.

Does it matter if the Angry Cripple is actually a cripple or not? You bet it does.

Others tell people with disabilities what their best interests are too often. For all of their good intentions, the people who look after us are the ones who do it the most. This is why The Angry Cripple’s identity is important. If he/she is a carer, then the column is doing itself no favours, and merely adding to the chorus of carers who already have their say in the mainstream media. If however, The Angry Cripple is disabled it represents an opportunity for a too often neglected voice to enter the mainstream.

Continue reading "Carers: Step off and let people with disabilities speak" »