Disability Sector Advocacy and Beyond

 My interaction with the disability sector is a strange intertwining of participant and worker. 

For nearly forty years I have received disability services from agencies and support workers in the disability sector. My work as an advocate in the disability sector began in 2004. Which also started the strange feeling of being outside the service and yet working inside the sector. 

To be a good worker in the disability sector you need to be able to take an holistic view of disability and the individuals that live with them. The disability sector is supposed to support people with disabilities to live independent lives. Rights and choice are ideally imbedded into every policy, procedure, and outcome delivered by agencies and workers for people with disabilities. I know the disability sector tries hard to do this but it is important to take the words from the documents and transform them into action in the real world. An example of this is the NDIS; the original design of the scheme was to cut down on red tape and empower people with disabilities, instead red tape has been increased and advocacy funding has been cut or excluded entirely. 

Every level of the disability sector should consider themselves advocates for people with disability. Advocacy starts in the morning when my staff get me ready for work and should continue all the way to the prime minister of Australia. 

As an advocate you are not speaking up for the way you think a person with disability should live but the way they want their life to go. I hope to see a world where there are no sectors. There is just life. I look forward to this future for the disability sector advocacy and beyond.

Disability Sector

Calling all departments.

Finance sector report. 

Government sector report.

Able sector report. 

Disability sector report.

Can somebody tell me who belongs where before all these labels get too hard to sort?

The government sector is a genuine helper and protector;

But what happens when my disability doesn't fit 

The image they have on their PowerPoint projector?

Disability is not easy to pinpoint on a map;

At the intersection of inclusion and disability there is too big a gap.

What happens when the cost benefit financially sees my disability as a liability?

My mind tries to sneak across the sector to sit at the able table.

The disability sector needs a disabled director 

Because we know the rights and choice belong to us all

And we shouldn't have to go sector by sector in a crawl.

Inclusion and choice should not be a shadowy spectre;

They are the light of the disability sector.

Chris Van Ingen | 13/06/2022