So this is how social workers think, how revealing, good grief.

So tell us Steve, how should Social Workers think? Should we continue on the same path as now which is discriminatory?

You do know that if every politician suddenly woke to a family with people of disabilities, they would rework the laws instantly. Even if only for themselves.

I received a letter myself saying that I am expected to work soon, but what? My neurological illness affects my vision, ability to walk, to concentrate, judging distances, speech, concentration, involuntary limb movements - and unable to move limbs, etc.

I'm thinking of applying to be John Howard's Chaffeur.

Spider.

I read and then re read the article, to quote John Cleese it is stating the bleeding obvious.

The most I could glean is a need for differential treatment between brain injured and mentally ill. The verbose terminology reminded me of Govt. doublespeak.

I only have incurable leukaemia so social workers tend to run in another direction (my personal bias on display).

Stay well and take care.

The best of luck to the two contributors posting ahead of me. I particularly like the thought of Spider becoming John Howard's chauffeur, good on you.

My reaction was to wonder how many people like the article's authors there are out there compared to the number who are actually in the front line, doing the caring.

The combination of earnest management-speak with monotonous repetition of the bleedin' obvious, makes for excruciating reading.

Who writes this stuff for a living? How much of their time, and therefore our money, do they spend putting it all together? Who reads it? How many people read it, and what do they do once they have read it? Do they then start a research programme of their own to refute its findings? Do they then prepare it as a paper for a conference somewhere, and present it to a heap of other folk, who go away and prepare their own thoughts for another article that says the same thing in six months time?

How does this impact policy? Wouldn't it just get up the noses of the people who put together the previous policy - probably with equal enthusiasm for "doing the right thing" - and cause them to rush off to departmental meetings to discuss its implications on their work, and to prepare a defence when their department head asks them for a response that he can give the minister...

Or perhaps it is simply an elaborate job application.

Look at me, look at me.

Pericles and Madden, I am a full-time carer of a person with a disability and unfortunately your comments have contributed absolutely nothing to this important debate. The authors have attempted to state something which is NOT at all obvious because we still have different services for different disabilites. It is very hard for consumers and carers like myself.

Thank you for your unhelpful comments.

Pericles & Madden

I just wanted to add some reality and sense to the unhelpful rubbish you two were saying becuase without decent disabilities policy, consumers and carers (like myself) suffer. As per my last post, I felt your trite criticisms of the article itself only served to trivialize the experiences of people with disabilities and their carers, and yes, Madden, you did state you had a disability so a more useful contribution from you would have been expected.

Pericles, you ask, rhetorically I assume, "How does this (article) impact policy...?" If articles like this one were publicised more and debate around disabilities policy stimulated (especially in terms of the needs of consumers/carers) then hopefully we would eventually get better policies and services. Services which looked at the entire person and the support needs of the carers. Without carers, many of whom are F/T and effectively unpaid like myself,people with disabilities would by and large be left to fend for themselves because government funded dis services are too few and inadequate, including things like housing. We cant expect better services without someone kicking off the discussion and I, for one, think the authors did us all a great service.

We all have some form of disability,it is really only a matter of degree that makes unable to work.We have 700,000 or 10% of our full time workforce on disability pensions.

You can get one for all manner of ailments from drug and alcohol addiction to nebulus medical ailments such as ADD,ADS or perceived personality disorders;any GP will gladly oblige and refer you on to a necessary specialist.

Next step is to find a part time cash job and you will have a great lifestyle of working 3 days a week and paying no tax and letting the rest of society support you.

I've seen it and so have many others.I wonder how long our system will last before it collapses.

Paul & Fiona, what’s wrong with sheltered workshop-type employment? I’m sure it’s better than no employment at all. Also don’t you mean “lack of security of housing tenure”?

I guess it is obvious, and yet unaddressed.

Assistance given to disabled people should be based on how disabled they are. A lot of minor disabilities can be as crippling as one major one. What I mean is that, if the whole person was assessed, rather than the disability in isolation, it would be possible to gauge the extent to which the disability affects that person's life.

This might also help control the people who exploit the system - those people who could get by but choose not to because they can get away with it.

Sorry this doesn't make much sense, I'm having an obtuse and incomprehensible day.

This article had good intentions but were some gaps, and entire oceans in the disability world it hasn't even considered.

The authors first interpreted the usual classifications of intellectual disability; psychiatric disability; sensory/speech disability; acquired brain injury; and physical disability. Thats it? What about all the others?

There are other disabilities that include medical disabilities like HIV, HCV, and some cancers that can be managed, but are chronic.

HIV/AIDS is a disability. HIV causes destruction of effective immune systems to protect the body from diseases, many of which don't effect people with immune systems. Hep C people are disabled as their livers are not functioning, and can find it difficult to function at all. This is medical, not physical or psychological.

With the HIV, multiple disabilites are common as some are also deaf, blind or are paraplegic, with the tripple whammy, including homophobic prejudice if they are gay. A quadro whammy is not unusual with other HIV + people with other disabilites: who are also gay, and from other cultures in Sydney. Their cultures usually deny them.

Now there is an expectation for HIV people to return to employment, assumining that treatments manage the condition. This is not true as there is the medication "resistance crisis". Regardless, the services relentlessly spend their time and resouces shoving HIV people into the workforce. Even those who can't walk, that have no immune system, are frail, have multiple cancers, have mental problems.

Services for HIV + people are cut and funds are reallocated to employment agencies. The whimsy of a misinformed Health Minister who is mean and careless in being so unrealistic. The service providers are often rude stand over AIDS patients with snide remarks of them being dirty, ungreatful and useless. With such abuse, HIV service providers are a disgrace and their funding needs a serious review. The Government expectations are wishful thinking, and in error. The outcome ends in abusive disasters. They need care, not oppression dressed as care.

intellectual disability; psychiatric disability; sensory/speech disability; acquired brain injury; and physical disability.

Nope don't have any of those. Unless physical disability means auto-immune heamolytic anemia, or leukeamic infiltrations into most of my organs. Leukeamic arthritis? Maybe.

My point is that I was hoping the article would have something to say that was relevant to me (selfish I know). I hate the word consumer, I consume KFC not services. In fact the only service I get to use is the ambulance service.

miles, I empathise with you, as a carer it is often more difficult than being a disabled person but I thought your criticism a little unfair. As a sympathetic reader of the article I did not understand what was being said and saw it as an opportunity lost.

I didnt' understand what was being said either and it drained me. Glad I wasn't alone.

There already is a system in place to provide assistance for people with disabilities, the problem is that there is no accountability and there is no supervision and there is no control and because of that there is abuse.

So much money being wasted that could be put to much better use.

I am also sympathetic to the cause of disabled people (my aunt has both intellectual and physical disablities and has lived in a group home since she was 18. She is now 50.), but I found the article difficult to read in its double-speak, as others have noted.

To me, the main issue for people with disablities is the frustration and stupidity of constantly changing rules. For example, every two years my aunt has to have a full medical work up from her GP, who then has to write a comprehensive report on her health and ability to work and function independently. (For centrelink etc) Every time the criteria gets tighter, and causes both her and her mother (now in her late 70s) much stress and anxiety that she will be forced out of her living situation. Surely, after 32 years in an assisted living environment, only ever working in a protected workshop situation a day or two a week, it would be recognised that there is no miracle cure, and they would stop harrassing her?

I know there has to be accountablity, and that the 'system' has to stop people falsely claiming benefits, but it is very difficult for those with legitimate claims.

saintfletcher, this government is what my GP calls them, "Evil".

He calls them evil because they are forcing a number of his patients into working who can't. He said that many of them are sicker now than they have been for a long time and the health system is ignoring them.

The Howard Government is a callous, evil, sinful government. So much for their Christian Moral Values.

Laurie, I met this man in his late 60's who was caring for his son in the mid 40's. His son is Autistic and has Cerebal Pausy and every two years, they try to force this disabled person, who is a vegetable, back into the workforce.

Howard & Co. need a certain necktie.

I support the content of the article and I also support the comments of Pericles. My view is that at least the subject is being debated and we can hound politicians and agencies with these and our own opinions. I have a disability that is not typically classified as such, however it does determine my ability to work. I think that it is important that people such as myself are recognised within the classification of disabilities so that we have a chance to improve our quality of life. So I support any activity that could or would work towards this.

Being both married to a person with a disability, having a father who has had a stroke and paralysed, and having worked in the field supporting people with high needs in "open employment" I understand the issues from both sides of the fence, but really am left less than impressed with this paltry offering. Do these people actually have any contact with people with disabilities? I haven't seen many references to Down's syndrome by people who actually work with these people and know it's technically Down syndrome, but I'm being a bit too picky methinks.

Part of the reason that people have to go from one place to another for services is that these disabilities require in depth and expert care. I would rather traipse around seeing three people who know what they are doing rather than one who is OK at most stuff, jack of all trades and master of none. Or were they talking of integrated service delivery? I can’t make that one out.

Also, anyone with half an ounce of experience knows that the federal/state funding divide is what causes most anxiety. The number of times I have tried to get a client (not consumer, that is one of the most abominable descriptors I have ever come across) in to a service that would particularly help them only to be told that I have to either get them out of one they were already in because they are already "federally funded" and seeing this new program was "state funded" they were seeing as double dipping. You see they were already having some needs met and having them part of two service providers meant that someone who had nothing missed out, and again, who gets the "stats" for getting them in to self sustainability? Me or them?

We need empathy not sympathy