Thursday, 28 November 2024
10am – 3.30pm (AEDT – Sydney time) – registration from 9.30am
In Person: Susan Wakil Health Building (D18), Western Avenue, University of Sydney, Level 2 – Room 207
Webinar: via Zoom
Please note that this event is only available via zoom – all in-person spots have been exhausted.
This event is about the Disability Royal Commission which looked at the abuse of people with intellectual disabilities.
You will hear from leading academics, peak bodies, people with intellectual disabilities and service providers about what the Royal Commission found. They will talk about how this is the same or different from research. They will also talk about what has happened in the past year and what needs to happen next. The topics are supported decision-making, inclusive governance, mainstream housing, parenting, and living in a rural area.
There will be time to talk about what needs to change. A graphic facilitator will create a picture of what the people presenting and attending the event talk about.
Speakers:
Christine Bigby (Living with Disability Research Centre, La Trobe University)
Christine Bigby is a Professor of Social Work at LaTrobe University and Director of the Living with Disability Research Centre at La Trobe University, Melbourne.
She researches practice that supports the engagement and social inclusion of adults with intellectual disabilities. She works in collaboration with disability service providers and self advocates.
Chris has been on the Board of ASID for some years and was the founding editor of the ASID practice Journal, Research and Practice in Intellectual and Developmental Disability.
Chris is a longstanding fan of folk music and trying hard to become a fitness fanatic.
Bernadette Curryer – Side by Side Advocacy
Bernadette has been involved in the disability sector as a parent, advocate, and researcher. She has a strong interest in the self-determination of adults with intellectual disability. She is currently working at Side By Side Advocacy in Parramatta, leading a research project exploring the inclusion of people with intellectual disability in the decision-making and governance of disability and community organisations.
Katrina Sneath – SIde by Side Advocacy
Katrina is a passionate advocate for people with disability. She enjoys public speaking and meeting new people. She worked with the Inclusive Governance Project as a co-researcher. Her message is: “Believe in yourself and don’t let your disability get in the way of anything”.
Ilan Wiesel – The University of Melbourne
Ilan Wiesel is an Associate Professor in urban geography at the University of Melbourne. His research is focused on questions of social inclusion and exclusion for people with intellectual disabilities, with a particular focus on housing, social relations and everyday encounters.
Stuart Wark – University of New England
Stuart Wark works at the School of Rural Medicine at the University of New England in Armidale. He has worked with people with intellectual disabilities for over 30 years. Stuart is currently also a Committee Member for the NSW Division of ASID.
Susan Collings – Western Sydney University
Dr Susan Collings is a Senior Research Fellow at the Transforming early Education and Child Health (‘TeEACh’) Research Centre at Western Sydney University. Susan’s applied research aims to tackle the social inequalities that impact on the lives of children and families facing adversity using participatory and arts-based approaches. Susan has made a contribution to evidence about the lives and barriers faced by families headed by parents with intellectual disability and holds positions on Australian and international research and advocacy groups committed to improving outcomes for these families. Susan lives on the traditional lands of the Wadi Wadi people of the Dharawal nation.
Maeve Kennedy – Inclusion Australia
Maeve joined Inclusion Australia in 2022 as the Senior Manager of Policy and Projects, overseeing much of IA’s work through the Disability Royal Commission and responding to its final report and the government’s response. She also oversaw key IA projects with a focus on human rights, supported decision-making, and quality and safeguarding. Maeve’s background is in social policy, and she previously worked in other disability policy and advocacy roles for five years, including at Children and Young People with Disability Australia, where her team was also involved with the Royal Commission.
Fiona McKenzie
I was very proud of the fact that I was the first female chairperson with intellectual disability at CID and I’m excited to be doing the vice chair role.
It’s really important to me because it means that women and people with intellectual disability can lead the way at CID.
I do a lot of advocacy work, supporting our campaigns, and I have talked to a lot of politicians, letting them know what CID does and about big issues like health.
Mentoring people is really important to me, especially in peer to peer work between people with intellectual disability. It really gets people motivated.
Luke Nelson
Luke is a 35-year-old self-advocate who has been active in the disability sector for the past 17 years. He has played an important role in supported decision-making policy creation as well as participated on reference groups, educated Social Worker students about choice and control for people with an intellectual disability and supported people with intellectual disability understand their rights. He has an engaging energy and excellent knowledge of disability advocacy. He is often asked to present or be part of panels where he can share his personal experience as well as his professional experience through his roles with Inclusion Australia and VALID.
Carolyn Smith – Council for Intellectual Disability
Carolyn has a background in education and has worked in the disability sector for over 25 years. Her experience working within Government has given her insights into systems that aim to protect people, but as a result, often disempower them. Carolyn joined the Council for Intellectual Disability in October as their Senior Manager in the newly formed Advocacy Team to be part of the practical move to Supported Decision Making in NSW.
Abstracts:
- ‘Old problems and old solutions’ Snapshots of the Disability Royal Commission and people with intellectual disabilities
Christine Bigby & Alan Hough
Research and Practice in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (RAPIDD) published a special issue about how the impact of the Commission recommendations on people with intellectual disabilities. We analysed the 23 papers in the special issue. They identified shortcoming of the Commission as its:
- over reliance on law, policy and regulatory reform
- failure to go beyond existing knowledge and move debate further
- neglect of what good looks like
- dedifferentiated approach.
- reluctance to go beyond symptoms to root causes.
In this presentation we will talk about these shortcomings, suggest the reasons for them, and briefly consider the value of the Commission.
- What has happened since the Disability Royal Commission and what this means for people with intellectual disabilities
Maeve Kennedy & Luke Nelson
- Supported decision making and the Disability Royal Commission – did it move thinking forward?
Christine Bigby
The Disability Royal Commission gave a lot of attention to supported decision making during its enquiry. Its main recommendations were about reforming Guardianship, and proposed a set of national supported decision making principles. But it did not look far beyond legal reform. This meant the Commission missed an opportunity to embed supported decision making principles across service sectors and build capacity of both informal and formal decision supporters. This presentation will review these missed opportunities and progress on guardianship and other reforms about supported decision making since the Commission’s report.
- Inclusive Governance
Bernadette Curryer & Katrina Sneath
The Disability Royal Commission recognised that people with intellectual disability should be involved in the decision-making of disability-related organisations, included in policy development, co-design and governance roles. The Commission accepted that the capacity of a person to undertake these roles should only be considered once they were receiving the support they needed. However, the Commission failed to make recommendations that would resource, facilitate and guarantee this inclusion.
- Supported decision-making and inclusive governance in practice
Carolyn Smith & Fiona McKenzie
- Mainstream Housing
Ilan Wiesel
The Royal Commission’s Final Report identified multiple barriers preventing people with disabilities in Australia from living in suitable housing. In my talk I will focus primarily on “mainstream” housing options, where the majority of people with disabilities live. I will review the Commission’s recommendations relating to mainstream housing, and will argue that these recommendations can be transformative, but only if new supply of affordable housing is developed and delivered at scale. Yet this the question of affordable housing supply is one that the Commission refrained from tackling in its discussion and recommendations.
- Rural
Stuart Wark
People with intellectual disabilities who live in rural areas of Australia face additional problems in accessing the support that they need. The Final Report of the Disability Royal Commission contained 222 recommendations to improve services for people with intellectual disabilities. This presentation will talk about these recommendations with respect to whether they will actually improve the lives of people in rural areas.
- Parenting
Susan Collings
The Disability Royal Commission (DRC) claimed to apply a life course and rights-based approach to issues related to violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation against people with disability; however, a blind spot is the approach taken to parents with intellectual disability and to failure to take a reproductive justice across the life course. While the DRC commissioned research about parents with disability in general, by taking a group-level focus the specific barriers to parenting faced by those with intellectual disability (reported in an extensive evidence base) were rendered invisible. The intersection of parenting and child protection contact was viewed as intrinsic to First Nations families and, while bringing critical attention to some aspects of systemic violence and abuse for these families and communities, this focus foreclosed exposure of differences in issues and experiences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous parents with intellectual disability. These flaws prevented the DRC making important recommendations in relation to legal and policy reform to uphold the rights of people with intellectual disability to become parents and to receive the support they deserve and need.