DARU Update
22 August 2011
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IN THE NEWS
Council of Australian Governments Meeting – Communiqué –
Council of Australian Governments Meeting, Canberra, 19 August 2011
The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) held its 31st meeting in Canberra today. COAG welcomed the public release of the Productivity Commission’s final report on Disability Care and Support and agreed on the need for major reform of disability services in Australia through a National Disability Insurance Scheme.
COAG will develop high-level principles, by the end of 2011, to guide consideration of the Productivity Commission recommendations regarding a National Disability Insurance Scheme, including for foundation reforms, funding and governance. Given the high priority that all governments place on disability care and support, COAG agreed to the establishment of a Select Council of Treasurers and Disability Services Ministers, chaired by the Commonwealth, to consider the recommendations of the Productivity Commission’s report. The Select Council will commence work immediately, and will reflect and give effect to the principles, to be agreed by COAG. The Select Council will provide an initial report to COAG at its first meeting in 2012.
COAG agreed to progress quickly the measures agreed as part of the National Disability Agreement that have also been identified as foundation reforms for a National Disability Insurance Scheme, including development of a national assessment framework; nationally consistent service and quality standards for the disability services sector; and a comprehensive national disability services workforce strategy.
COAG also noted the Productivity Commission’s recommendations in relation to a National Injury Insurance Scheme and agreed to work together to consider the Productivity Commission’s recommendation.
COAG noted that disability services are currently the responsibility of State and Territory governments. All governments recognised that addressing the challenges in disability services will require shared and coordinated effort.
COAG also agreed to commence work on the development of a National Partnership Agreement on Mental Health which would focus on: stable accommodation and support; and the presentation, admission and discharge planning in major hospitals and emergency departments, and related support services. By addressing priority service gaps in Australia’s mental health system the National Partnership will help move Australia’s mental health system away from crisis-driven activity towards prevention, early intervention and care in the community.
COAG also agreed to commence work on a Ten Year Roadmap for National Mental Health Reform (the Roadmap) that will set out the vision, priorities, and main steps in achieving this vision.
The proposed National Partnership and the Roadmap will be considered by COAG before the end of 2011.
To read the full story visit http://everyaustraliancounts.com.au/council_of_australian_governments_meeting_communique_canberra/
Failing, Not Protecting the Community -Armed PSOs Apprehending People who “Appear to be Mentally Ill”
Media Release, Catherine Leslie, Policy Worker/Solicitor, 17 August 2011
Giving armed Protective Services Officers (PSOs) on Melbourne trains powers to apprehend, by force, a person who hasn’t committed a crime, but whom the PSO believes is mentally unwell, is an ill-conceived measure that will not address crime or safety. Rather, it will create fear in the community and a greater risk of fatal shootings.
The Justice Legislation Amendment (Protective Services Officers) Bill 2011 being debated today in Parliament aims to give PSOs broad police-like powers to combat crime, violence and antisocial behaviour on the rail network. Whilst the Government maintains it has a mandate to address these apparent risks in the community, there is no evidence to justify extending mental health-specific powers, currently limited to only police under the Mental Health Act 1986 (Vic).
“We know that people with psychiatric disability are more likely than the general public to suffer adverse – even fatal consequences – at the hands of police, particularly when they are in acute crisis,” said Catherine Leslie lawyer and policy worker at the Mental Health Legal Centre (MHLC). “Giving these new powers to PSOs who have even less training, supervision and support than police will only result in an escalation of critical incidents, and tragedy occurring.”
“The amendments also imply that people with mental illness are all violent, dangerous and engage in criminal behaviour, whereas the evidence indicates quite the opposite,” says Michelle McDonnell, policy officer at the Federation of Community Legal Centres “Most people with mental illness do not commit crimes and are more at risk of being a victim than a perpetrator of violence.”
These mental health-specific powers are less about addressing crime than they are about facilitating timely access to assessment and treatment, but they have serious consequences nonetheless. “We have very real concerns that giving PSOs these powers will result in people being detained for longer and handcuffed, restrained, sprayed with capsicum spray, without access to amenities, and in full view of the public,” says Ms Leslie.
It appears the amendments have been drafted without any consultation with the Department of Health, which is responsible for the care and treatment of people with psychiatric disability. Further, they undermine rather than inspire public confidence in safety and perceptions of safety on train stations.
“These amendments are clearly at odds with a mandate to address crime and commuter safety and will not achieve that aim,” says Ms McDonnell. “Consequently, they should be withdrawn.”
Do We Really Need a Victorian Human Rights Charter?
Farrah Tomazin, The Sunday Age, August 14, 2011
The state's charter of rights divides opinion as a decision on its fate looms. Rob Hulls always knew making Victoria the first Australian state to have a human rights charter would be contentious. By the time the Bracks government passed the legislation in 2006, after 15 months of consultation, 2524 public submissions and weeks of parliamentary debate, critics remained unconvinced.
Some called it ill-conceived or undemocratic, others abominable and ridiculous. For Hulls, the state attorney-general at the time, it was a simple decision: ''We've made it clear to other countries that we don't agree with their human rights record in some instances. Well, how can you do that on one hand, and on the other hand be one of the last Western societies in the world not to have a human rights instrument?''
Almost five years later, the Baillieu government is preparing to make a decision about the charter's fate. Even after all these years, the charter polarises opinion - between those who believe it is fundamental to democracy, and those who want it scrapped. Under the charter, Parliament must make legislation in accordance with the political and civil rights of citizens, the courts must interpret laws which adhere to human rights, and the government and its public agencies ''must not knowingly'' breach them.
Human rights advocates want the charter to stay, and argue it could be strengthened by including social and economic rights such as the right to education and housing, and by creating legal remedies for those whose rights have been breached.
Some admit the benefits have been unspectacular - perhaps due to the fact it's a softer version of protections offered in other countries, such as Canada and Britain - but at the least, proponents say, it's helped shape policies and forced state agencies to consider and comply with their human rights obligations.
Opponents say human rights in Australia are adequately protected without charters, and always have been. Church groups say the system is flawed because it fails to take into account the right to life of unborn children; conservative think tanks fear it could politicise the judiciary; and Police Association secretary Greg Davies claims it provides ''lots of rights for offenders and convicted criminals'' and not enough for victims or police officers.
While cabinet ministers have refused to comment until a parliamentary review is completed by October, the government's submission to the review paints a picture of how it has operated. According to the submission, taxpayers have spent $13.5 million teaching bureaucrats how to use the charter over the past five years, or to pay for departmental legal advice, administrative costs, and government grants to community groups that promote it.
The charter has also been cited in 329 litigation proceedings, including 60 cases in which a government department was a party to the proceeding.
But while the charter is at risk of being misused, it has also helped the disadvantaged. The Homeless Persons' Legal Clinic says it has used the charter to help prevent 42 people from being evicted from social housing. The Education Department has also used it to reform student dress-code policies, so that religious freedom and freedom of expression are better protected. And prisons have used it to establish better policies to deal with hunger strikes or protect the rights of transgender prisoners.
''Over four years, Victoria will spend $13.5 million on something as basic as removing and preventing graffiti,'' says Human Rights Law Centre director Ben Schokman. ''At a similar cost, the charter has fostered a human rights culture within government and enshrined a practical system of checks and balances in our independent court system to ensure the fundamental rights of Victorians are protected.''
Case Study: The mother: Geni Papadimitriou
Soon after she gave birth to daughter Ruby, Geni Papadimitriou found herself embroiled in a bitter battle to keep her. The 41-year-old youth worker had been diagnosed at birth with cerebral palsy, a crippling condition caused by damage in parts of the brain that control muscle tone and movement. As most of Ms Papadimitriou's time is spent in a wheelchair, child protection authorities feared she would be incapable of raising her child.
Ms Papadimitriou spent months trying to convince child protection workers that with support and aides she could look after Ruby. Authorities didn't believe her.
She turned to disability advocacy support group Leadership Plus, which used the human rights charter to help her in mediation proceedings. Her advocate, Giovanna Amato, argued Ms Papadimitriou's right to recognition of equality before the law was not being properly protected, nor was her right to protection of families and children. ''Basically my argument to child protection was this: you're identifying Geni as having cerebral palsy, you're not seeing her as a person or what her capacity is,'' Ms Amato said.
Ms Papadimitriou was eventually allowed to keep Ruby, now aged two. As for motherhood? ''I'm loving it, but it's been a big learning curve,'' she says.
To read the full story visit: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/do-we-really-need-a-victorian-human-rights-charter-20110813-1is57.html#ixzz1VFipsuhJ
Cruel Syndrome Brings Return of Polio Symptoms
Ian Munro, The Age, August 16, 2011
It may be the cruellest twist of a cruel disease: after you've recovered and built yourself a life polio can gift you a few decades of normalcy. Just long enough so the facts of how it shaped your childhood fades away. Then, in a different way it returns, to steal back that normal life.
Liz Telford knows all that. As a child she never could keep up with the crowd since she was the only one with a leg locked inside several kilograms of unyielding metal caliper. High school was a marathon of awkwardness, a sense of being unlike everybody else. At university, she blossomed. She became less reliant on walking aides and completed the first of several degrees on the path to a career in psychotherapy and family counselling.
''I spent my 20s and 30s just living my life, trying to put it out of my mind,'' she says. ''I was having children. I was studying. I had a marriage - I still have - I had a career. I was living a life as fully as you do. ''But when the kids grew past stroller stage, I started to notice I was not walking so well.''
That was her introduction to post-polio syndrome, where the body's adaptations to the original paralysing disease start to break down, resulting in renewed weakness, fatigue and breathing difficulties.
Polio attacks the nervous system, destroying the neurons that carry commands to the muscles controlling voluntary movement. In recovery the remnant neurons set out to replace those destroyed by polio, but these second-generation transmitters are relatively short-lived. It is believed it is their degeneration that creates post-polio syndrome.
Ms Telford was born in December, 1955, and contracted the disease the following May at six months of age. Ironically, May 1956 was the month the polio vaccine developed by US physician Jonas Salk arrived in Melbourne. It stopped the epidemic in its tracks and calmed a frightened generation of parents. By 1965, 90 per cent of Australian children aged between 5 and 14 were vaccinated. In Western countries, the disease is considered eradicated, but polio's effects endure.
Only one in every 100 people who contract polio experience paralysis but up to half the survivors of paralytic polio experience ''post-polio syndrome''. Records suggest 70,000 Australians were registered as suffering polio, but the real number may be higher.
''Generally speaking we have kind of just put our heads down and got on with it, trying to make the best we can with what we have,'' says Ms Telford of polio survivors. Many stop identifying with disability at all, she says. ''Then for many of us, sometime later in life things start to become a bit unstuck. Whereas I'd had the polio as a background issue, to all intents and purposes I got on with a normal life. And then I started to have new symptoms, things started to break down.
''I developed respiratory problems, which I was completely shocked about. As my mother used to say, I just had a gammy leg. So I had to get used to using aids and equipment I had not used for years.''
The later-in-life degeneration seems episodic. Something is lost, and then the body seems to stabilise, before slipping further, and restabilising.
Once again the polio survivor is getting on with it: Ms Telford has hired Northcote Town Hall next Monday from 11am to convene a meeting of polio survivors and their families. She hopes to establish a group to represent those experiencing post-polio syndrome.
''For people like me who are going through (post-polio syndrome), trying to get on with that normal life, there are huge emotional and physical and work implications,'' she says. ''We are hoping to provide an advocacy forum, awareness raising … I am interested in attracting people who have not been getting any support. There's a view that polio is yesterday, but it's here every day.''