Hope is not a Plan trailer
Paul Caune: Civil Rights
Now
******************************************************
Falling through the cracks
Cooper, A. (2013). Revelstoke Times Review.
This week, Jeffrey Moncrieff will be moving to Vancouver from Revelstoke. For the last six months he has been living here with his brother Andrew in the Big Eddy. It’s been tough getting out with the snow limiting his mobility. He had to leave his wheelchair in Vancouver, and even if he did have it, it wouldn’t have been much use to him here.
Moncrieff has cerebral palsy and also believes he has some form of autism, though he has not officially been diagnosed with it. He walks with a shuffle and his hand movements are slow and deliberate. He is difficult to understand. He needs help with many day-to-day activities most people take for granted – cleaning, shaving, cooking, doing laundry, even tying his shoes.
Jeffrey Moncrieff has tried to get into Community Living BC, an agency mandated to provide support for adults with developmental disabilities and those who meet the criteria for personal supports. He was denied because he didn’t meet their criteria.
“The documentation we have received does not confirm that you have significant limitations in adaptive functioning in addition to a diagnosis of either a Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) or Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD),” CLBC wrote in a letter denying him service.
For Moncrieff, that criteria amounts to discrimination. “I don’t think its fair to single out two groups with mental disabilities from a whole range of mental disabilities,” he said. “What happens to everyone else? They can’t get help. We didn’t ask to be born with a disability but we need some assistance and we can become good citizens.”
****************************************************
Understanding
people with disabilities needs to start with the young.
Breazeale, R. (2012). Psychology Today.
Breazeale, R. (2012). Psychology Today.
****************************************************
How
our communities can move beyond access to wholeness
Mingus, M. (2010). Disability Justice.
People usually think of disability as an individual flaw or problem, rather than as something partly created by the world we live in. It is rare that people think about disability as a political experience or as encompassing a community full of rich histories, cultures and legacies.
Disability is framed as lacking, sad and undesirable: a shortcoming at best, a tragedy at worst. Disabled people are used as the poster children of environmental injustice or the argument for abortion rights. For many people, even just the idea that we can understand disability as “not wrong” is a huge shift in thinking.
Our communities and movements must address the issue of access. There is no way around it. Accessibility is concrete resistance to the isolation of disabled people. Accessibility is nothing new, and we can work to understand access in a broad way, encompassing class, language, childcare, gender-neutral bathrooms as a start.
No comments:
Post a Comment