Welcome to the first edition of the AFDO newsletter for 2008.
Links to the contents of this issue are listed below.
In October this year, AFDO will hold its first conference. This will be an extremely exciting event and the organisation is well underway. Samantha Jenkinson, Frank Hall-Bentick and I make up the Conference organising committee but there will be times when we will require extra support from the Board and members as the year goes on and the conference gets closer.
What I can confirm is the Conference is to be held on the 9 & 10 October at the Telstra Dome here in Melbourne so mark that in your diary. Titled “Policy About Us, For Us”! A Practical Revolution in the Lives of People with Disabilities, we are looking forward to staging a very contemporary and relevant conference program. Look out for information as it comes to hand over the next few months. As one of our members put it during our members meeting, let’s make sure the conference has some “ZING” so that I think will become the unofficial conference motto.
We are very excited about holding our first conference as we see it as the first national conference on disability policy and direction since the International Year of People with Disabilities in 1982. The theme of the conference will encompass the philosophy of Social Inclusion but will have a practical edge on how we move forward.
Our agreement with FaHCSIA is to oversee the consultation process and, interpret feedback from the disability sector and assist the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) and the Attorney General’s Department (AGD) to ensure that work created is appropriate to the needs of people with disability.
Consultations are occurring in mid-February and Therese Sands from PWDA has finalised and an interim report to which she spoke to at our members meeting in Sydney on the 19 February. Thank you as much Therese as the report was excellent and as you might be aware, Roundtable Consultations on the Impact of Ratification have occurred in various cities during February with the results to be provided in the final report on the project, which is due to FaHCSIA and the Attorney General’s Department on the 31 March.
Information on the UN Convention discussion paper and project can be seen on the www.disabilityrightsnow.org.au/ website
We held our first member meeting of the year in Sydney on the 18 & 19 February. This was an excellent opportunity for our members to discuss our ongoing direction on a number of issues:
• Welfare to Work
• Income Support
• Social Inclusion/Policy
• Employment/Job Capacity Assessments
ACOSS presented on policy options and current government plans and gave us a great insight into their dealings with government particularly around the social Inclusion agenda.
I found the meeting extremely useful as not only did I get the opportunity to meet many of our members, but I got a real sense of the commitment and knowledge of our members and the willingness to move forward on a number of issues. After the meeting in Sydney, we traveled to Canberra and we were able to pass on straight away some of the concerns and issues raised at the members meeting.
Staff from HREOC were very generous with their time, venue and support. David Mason and Michael Small both gave us updated on issues from the HREOC perspective particularly around the UN Convention, DDA Standards and Health and Disability. Thanks go to HREOC for hosting our meeting and providing us with support throughout the two days.
Happy New Year and welcome to what is proving to be a very busy 2008. So far it has been a whirlwind start to the year. In the first 2 months it has been all go and it doesn’t look like it will slow down any time soon. I’m still trying to find my feet as CEO but with the help of Collette, Brenda and Samantha I’m starting to come to grips with what is required of me as well as AFDO in general.
Since the election of the new federal government, we have had the opportunity to meet with Bill Shorten, Parliamentary Secretary for FaHCSIA on four occasions to discuss a range of issues. These issues have included but were not restricted to Welfare to Work, Access to Premises Standards, UN Convention, Business Services and wage assessment tools, Young People Living in Nursing Homes, National Disability Advocacy Program, Job Capacity Assessments/ Disability Employment Networks and of course Social Inclusion. We have made it very clear how important it is to have people with disabilities involved in the consultation and development of a Social Inclusion agenda. We have found these meetings to be very positive and useful for both parties and we look forward to an ongoing and healthy relationship with Mr. Shorten. We have also met with Senator Brendan O’Connor, staff from Minster Kim Carr’s Office, FaHCSIA, and the Attorney General’s Department.
In December 2007, we held our AGM and made some minor changes to our governance manual, elected a new Executive of the Board and introduced two new Board members. We would like to welcome Dean Barton-Smith from Deaf Australia and Frank Nowlan from Blind Citizens Australia to the Board. We look forward to utilizing their expertise on AFDO’s ongoing strategic direction. We held Board inductions for both Dean and Frank and they both have expressed that they found the process extremely helpful and believe it has only enhanced their ability to participate as effective board members. I also found the inductions useful for gaining greater understanding of the relationship between the board and the CEO.
The new Board Executive is:
Chair – Samantha Jenkinson
Deputy Chair – Graham Douglas-Meyer
Treasurer – Frank Hall-Bentick
One of the big items to come out of the AGM was agreement and commitment to hold the first AFDO Conference in 2008
There have been a number of other tasks that AFDO has commenced over the previous few months and these have included:
We look forward to big 2008 with it being a busy but productive year.
Regards
Jeremy Muir
CEO
AFDO has agreed to produce or facilitate the production of articles for the National Link Disability Magazine. Below is the first article written by our Chair, Samantha Jenkinson that features in the April edition. Look out for future articles and specific AFDO conference advertising. We would like to Thank Denny Rosey – Link Disability Magazine Editor - for the opportunity to contribute to Link.
Standing up for the rights of people with disability: From advocacy to inclusion.
by Samantha Jenkinson, AFDO Chair
What do people with disability know about advocacy? Or the general public for that matter?
If you have a look in the dictionary or on the Internet you can find lots of definitions of advocacy. You can also find lots of discussion about the types of advocacy there are available. Put simply an advocate is someone who speaks on behalf of someone else.
People with disability experience discrimination, and barriers to participation everyday. Some to the degree that it is considered abuse or neglect, and most missing out on some human rights.
Many people with disability need help to know what their rights are and to stand up for their rights. Sometimes people have a friend or family member or volunteer who can speak on their behalf. They may not even think of it as advocacy, but just helping out.
People with disability stand up for themselves all the time but don't always call it advocacy or self-advocacy.
In Australia in 2003 there were 2.6 million people with disability under age 65, and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has estimated that 677,700 of these people had a severe or profound disability.
How many of these two and a half million people with disability needed support from an advocate through a funded organisation? When you feel you are not being listened to and others aren't giving credit to your choices and decisions then often this type of support is needed. It is a full time job just understanding the maze that is our service system in the disability sector, and even more to get through the bureaucracy of generic services. Add on top the discrimination experienced when accessing generic services due to peoples lack of understanding about disability and it is no wonder many people with disability need an advocate.
In fact our complicated service system and the lack of understanding of disability in the general community means that often people with disability are not listened to if they don't have an 'advocate' speaking for them.
So what do people with disability get out of advocacy? An individual would hope to get their issue heard and resolved. It is hoped they will learn about their rights and know that someone will listen to them. It is hoped that the next time they are faced with discrimination or an abuse of their rights they will feel more able to speak up for themselves. It is hoped that the advocate has educated the service provider, or government department, or business so that next time they encounter a person with disability the same problems do not arise.
What often happens is that individual advocates and individuals standing up for themselves often find they are experiencing the same barriers over and over. This is when systemic advocacy is needed to change the way things work so the same problems don't keep occurring.
Systemic advocacy is advocating to change the system to benefit more than one person and to benefit future users of the system. There are different levels of systemic advocacy though. There is systemic advocacy:
People with disability are an extremely diverse group. How do you represent people with disability on these issues that affect us all differently?
When you look at a lot of issues, no matter what level it may be at, you can see some root causes that keep coming up. Attitudes, physical access, poor or inaccessible communication, poverty, segregation etc. Addressing the root causes of an issue is called radicalism, radical meaning root. Whoever you are advocating to if you are advocating systemically then I believe you should be radical.
In the disability sector itself there are barriers which make it difficult to do effective radical systemic advocacy. Barriers for the sector are information sharing and giving room to diversity. Advocacy organisations and peak bodies representing different groups of people