Inside the July edition:
Hot Issues July 2009 (PDF 94Kb)
IHC wants families to have real choice in education
IHC is disappointed that Special Education Associate Minister Heather Roy continues to say that families and organisations such as IHC who are working towards inclusive education do not support parents’ right to choose the educational setting for their child.
It is true that IHC has an unequivocal commitment to inclusive and welcoming communities. A critical factor in the development of these communities is the local school being resourced well to meet the individual needs of children and teachers being educated and supported to be able to teach all children in their classroom. This is not the situation now. That is why we understand and respect parents who choose to have their child educated at a special school. IHC wants families to have real choice.
IHC is contributing and promoting knowledge and understanding, and hence informed discussion on the issue. We wish to share this with government in a collaborative process. This information includes our recently released inclusive education resources. The Making Inclusive Education Happen conference is being held on 28–30 September at Te Papa.
Recently, Dr Jude MacArthur spoke to Radio New Zealand’s Mike Gourley about 'Learning better together: Working towards inclusive education in New Zealand schools'.
IHC looks forward to the release of the forthcoming special education review terms of reference, and has discussed with the Minister the importance of that review being research-based, with a focus on what happens at the local school, for children, families and teachers.
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Dropping successful inclusive education support – because it works
A recent media story highlights the problems when artificial caps on government funding mean a disabled student doing well at her local school loses the support she needs.
Sadly, this is a story that IHC hears only too often despite the Education Act giving every child in New Zealand the right to go to their local, regular school 20 years ago. Inclusive education means continuing support. Dropping funding part way through a disabled student’s schooling is one of the particular areas of concern in IHC’s complaint to the Human Rights Commission. Read what the Inclusive Education Action Group says.
IHC director of advocacy Trish Grant, school principal Kevin Jephson and Special Education Associate Minister Heather Roy debated the issue with Kathryn Ryan on Nine to Noon on 9 July.
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Education resourcing swings and roundabouts
That the education resourcing issue is recurring, despite the extra funding promised in the Budget this year is concerning. The additional $51 million for extending Ongoing and Reviewable Resourcing Schemes (ORRS) over the next four years caters for an additional 1125 very high needs students. Cabinet has stated that “all special needs pressures must be managed within this additional ORRS funding”.
Funding has also been provided for additional support for students with high health needs and to increase the number of students meeting new literacy and numeracy national standards, among other increases. However, cuts have been made in many other areas, including to professional development and school support.
How are these figures arrived at and who decides they are the right ones? In fact, the increases only address shortfalls over many years. How much of this funding gets taken up in administrative costs in the highly regulated, bureaucratic and inflexible special education system also needs addressing, as promised by Minister Roy in the review.
The education sector union NZEI is calling on the Government to honour the findings of a completed pay investigation, which found that education support workers, who work with special needs children, are significantly underpaid.
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IHC concerned that students with intellectual disability will lose out with national standards
IHC’s submission on the national literacy and numeracy standards agrees with the Government’s stated objective of expecting our education system to support every child to achieve. However, the proposed standards present some serious concerns for children with intellectual disabilities.
- Research shows that setting “clear expectations and high, but attainable standards” through skill-based assessment standards, as proposed, do not raise educational achievement for children with intellectual disabilities. Instead, specific alternative assessment strategies for children with disabilities identify their achievements based on strength-based assessment.
- It can be detrimental to students when irrelevant and inappropriate assessment criteria are continually used to check a student’s achievements, which they are continually ‘not achieving’.
- Schools that attract large numbers of disabled students may be disadvantaged by national standards, particularly if the testing approach is not responsive to diverse student groups. These schools should not be put in a position where they have to explain low average test results.
- Schools may become unwilling to enrol disabled students because they will lower the school’s national standards results, which will impact on the choices made by parents of non-disabled children.
- The consultation document states that students who need extra support are identified and their learning needs addressed. What guarantee is there that this would improve if national standards are implemented? Under the current system, children with intellectual disabilities already have their learning needs assessed and regularly reviewed through individual education plans. Due to inadequate resourcing of schools and inadequately trained and supported teachers, however, there are large numbers of disabled students who do not receive the extra support they need. Therefore, their learning needs are not being addressed.
- After similar national mandatory assessment tests were introduced in the USA, it was found that disabled children were not participating in the testing, so their educational progress was no longer being monitored. As a consequence, the assessment framework was reviewed and changed to an ‘Authentic Student Learning Approach’.
IHC concludes that – as with any child – assessing and monitoring their educational progress is critical in providing valuable information to both their teachers and parents. But, assessment and monitoring cannot be a ‘one-size-fits-all’ system. An effective assessment framework and process must accommodate the complexities of how every child learns.
Parents of children with intellectual disabilities are concerned that the proposed national standards will fail to:
- adequately assess their child’s learning needs and progress
- provide the teacher with the right information to improve their child’s learning outcomes
- ensure disabled children are fully included in the assessment process long term
- guarantee that schools will not be influenced by having to maintain their assessment results, when making enrolment decisions about disabled children .
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Kristina and Dylan’s story
Kristina is a sole parent, raising Dylan who has autism. Dylan’s care dominates their family life to the point where Kristina can’t get a paid job. She also struggles with the fact that she doesn’t have enough time for daughter Tyler, eight.
Even though Dylan, just turned seven, is in a mainstream class at school he was sent home for six weeks of the last school term.
“There is no way I could hold a job down. Even if I was employed in the disability sector, that is still a lot to ask, to be able to take six weeks off in a three-month period,” she says.
“I wouldn’t expect anyone else to take care of my child, and I wouldn’t want them to.”
But she wants the role parents have to be valued and for people to realise that parents are under stress and dealing daily with the reality of lost opportunities – for their family member and for themselves
www.ihc.org.nz/Default.aspx?tabid=1205#call-to-action.
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New Disabilities Issues Minister Tariana Turia
Tariana Turia has been promoted to Disability Issues Minister, with Paula Bennett having relinquished this role to focus on her Social Development and Employment portfolio. Minister Turia says her main focus will be to make sure disabled people and their families can fully participate in society. Tariana Turia is also Associate Health Minister with responsibility for disability, Associate Social Development and Employment Minister and Community and Voluntary Sector Minister. Pansy Wong is new Associate Disabilities Issues Minister.
Assuming that Minister Turia will now chair the Disability Issues Ministerial Committee, IHC trusts that it will operate transparently and inclusively from now on. And make real progress in the whole-of-government approach needed for disability issues. Read Ms Turia’s speech while she was still Associate Disabilities Issues Minister.
To date, no information on progress or its work programme has been provided by the committee to the disability sector.
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Another committee without us says DPA
The Disabled Persons Assembly in its latest newsletter expresses concern that the establishment of the Disability Issues Ministerial Committee is another committee ‘without us’ as the new Government’s response to the select committee disability inquiry report.
DPA President Wendy Neilson says that in forming the committee, people with disability, who are movers and shakers in the disability sector, should have been brought on board to work alongside them. She says the committee may do valuable work, but that at this stage she lacks confidence that it will understand the issues disabled people face.
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IHC looks to Government for solution to pay disability support staff
The Employment Court has found that disability support workers are working when doing ‘sleepover’ shifts and should be paid at least the hourly adult minimum wage. The consequences for IDEA Services are very serious.
IHC values the work that IDEA Services’ nearly 7,000 staff do, day and night. We pay them what government funds us to pay. There is no money to pay the millions of dollars we would need to pay the minimum wage to all staff who sleep over. Our services are solely funded by the Government and we are looking to the Government for a solution.
The case is one of two brought by the Service and Food Workers Union and the Public Service Association, which have thousands of members working sleepover shifts in the disability, mental health and aged care sectors. They also say that the Government needs to ensure employers have the funding they need to pay disability support workers, and others working sleepover shifts, at least the minimum wage.
Labour disability spokesperson Lynne Pillay says the decision recognises the real value of the work of thousands of workers caring for those with disabilities and other people in vulnerable situations.
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Death by indifference in New Zealand?
IHC is still waiting for the health ministry report addressing heath disparities for people with intellectual disabilities. After several delays the report was due to the Minister at the end of May.
Two avoidable deaths of disabled women highlight the vulnerability of disabled people in relation to their health needs.
- A physically disabled teenager being cared for by a disability trust while her parents were on holiday died in hospital after her worsening symptoms were not recognised or responded to. The trust chief executive is reported as saying at the inquest that the teenager was being cared for in “a social model of support, not a medical model”. However, she agreed with the chief coroner that better communication with the young person’s doctor could have helped avoid the death. The young person’s school had made repeated contact with the trust over concern about her health.
- An independent investigation into the death of a severely disabled woman in hospital blames a lack of understanding of her needs by busy staff. The reviewers made 24 recommendations, including ongoing staff responsiveness training, a review of early warning systems, management plans for high-needs patients, and calls on the district health board and the Ministry of Health to look at the service gap for people under 65 with disabilities in hospital. Disabled Persons Assembly national policy researcher Wendi Wicks said the hospital deserved full credit for recognising the problem but sadly the issues were endemic.
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IHC National Self Advocacy Community Forums coming up
IHC’s Self Advocacy Team and Self Advocacy Advisory Committee have planned 22 National Self Advocacy Forums for 2009. These forums are for people with intellectual disabilities and focus on their issues. This year it is envisaged the forums will mainly include people who use IDEA Services, with membership extended in future. 'Call to Action' is a strong reference point for these forums.
The forums will be a dynamic, evolving process that will strengthen the self advocacy voice as people who use services have strongly stated “We want to be part of the solution, and not just the problem”.
For more information, please contact:
Caroline Barnes
National Self Advocacy Manager
04 471 5752
0274135719
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Update
- IHC’s next Community Forum is in Hamilton on 29 August. Access more information or to register online. Due to low numbers, the Christchurch forum was cancelled. Next year IHC will look at doing some smaller events in local communities as well as look at trying again, maybe in the summer.
- Special Olympics New Zealand is one of the four new recipients of Television New Zealand’s free on-air advertising for the next two years. Worth up to $50,000 a month, this sponsorship enables the chosen charities to promote their services and drive fundraising activities. Special Olympics aims to empower people with intellectual disability through sports and physical training. Chairperson David Rutherford says this investment provides Special Olympics with the opportunity to inspire more New Zealanders to become involved in a movement that uses community sport to foster acceptance and inclusion of all people.
- Health ministry representatives have visited Western Australia and Queensland as part of the ministry’s investigation of Local Area Coordination (LAC). This is part of the Government response to the select committee disability inquiry. LAC involves working with individuals, families and communities to make a practical difference to disabled people’s everyday lives. Find out more in the ministry’s disability support services e-newsletter.
- Auckland Disability Law is one year old. It says it’s been an exciting and challenging first year and is very happy that funding has been secured for the next year. There are plenty of changes being implemented to start off the second year, including now having two lawyers and a legal advocate.
- The Human Rights Commission is reviewing the progress towards making all public land transport services accessible to disabled people. It is now three years since the Commission published the 'Accessible Journey' report. As part of the process the Commission wants to hear about disabled people’s experience of using public land transport services. Disabled people have until the 31 July to fill in a survey about their experiences over the past year.
- A survey commissioned by the Human Rights Commission has found people with a disability or health condition are often discriminated against. It found that 28 percent of disabled respondents had been discriminated against due to a disability or health condition.
- In her keynote address 'From Strategy to Convention: Implementing Disability Human Rights in New Zealand', Human Rights Commissioner Robyn Hunt reflects on how far we’ve come in the pursuit of disability rights and looks to the future in the post-Convention environment.
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Last words
IHC is heartened by the Government’s messages to state sector leaders in July. These messages are highly relevant to both our advocacy and disability support services roles. Related issues are covered in each 'Hot Issues' and set out in our briefings to incoming ministers.
Here’s what State Services and Health Minister Tony Ryall said:
- We want a tighter focus on the programmes and policy that will deliver results, and an emphasis on the things that make a tangible difference to the lives of New Zealanders.
- Whether it is in our health system, education, social services, or central government departments, the Government wants to see improved frontline service delivery.
- Better public services come from an understanding of the users of those services – their needs and their expectations…A successful user-focus needs commitment not just from frontline staff – but also from management, strategy and policy teams.
- You have an opportunity today to take a look at different approaches for the achievement of service delivery for New Zealanders…The services will be better suited to the individual’s needs, and we will be removing layers of bureaucracy that both the public and the government agencies have had to tolerate.
- You need to be working cooperatively as public servants to improve frontline services for New Zealanders – whether for individuals, businesses, or sectors.
- Be unafraid of challenging your Ministers, or providing them with new ideas. Difficult times call for innovative solutions…we expect you to inform the government of the facts, actively discuss the challenges, and provide the solutions.
IHC emphasises that to achieve this, consultation and engagement with users and providers, including in the NGO sector, is essential.
Please feel free to pass 'Hot Issues' on to others. We welcome feedback and ideas for topics.
Contact
IHC Advocacy
0800 442 442
advocacy@ihc.org.nz
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Hot Issues July 2009 (PDF 94Kb)