walking . is . overrated

Last week I was down in Wellington for a youth forum on the ratification of UN Convention on the Right of Persons with Disabilities (link to document in PDF format) where I met Mike Gourlay, who runs the ‘One in Five‘ show on National Radio. The show runs at 7pm on Sunday nights, and addresses […]

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Some things really baffle me. One of those things is when a teenager with Down’s Syndrome is prevented from participating in a mainstream schooling environment because he isn’t allocated sufficient support funding, and, by mere virtue of the fact that he’s disabled, is seen as “a potential danger to themselves and others”. I’ve just been […]

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I shake my head in bewilderment…
Melissa Barton said she is considering legal action after her son’s kindergarten teacher led his classmates to vote him out of class.
After each classmate was allowed to say what they didn’t like about Barton’s 5-year-old son, Alex, his Morningside Elementary teacher said they were going to take a vote, Barton […]

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Okay, so James is a 4-year-old boy who has Down’s Syndrome, and is currently funded 10 hours of one-on-one care per week, equivalent to two hours a day at his local Kindergarten. While other kids attend for 17 hours a week, James can only go for 10, because that’s all his support allocation allows. His […]

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“Don’t worry, we won’t be removing your support, it’ll just take 3 weeks for you to get your notes from your notetakers from now on.”
That’s the message that disabled students are getting from the Manukau Institute of Technology, as they look to make budget cuts. As it is, the disability support office has had one […]

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Well in case you were worried that we were still living in a country where disabled people weren’t expected to go to Uni until they were 21, you can now rest easy again. Thanks to a hasty Cabinet meeting to correct an archaic funding anomaly which prevented Ryan Leitch going to Uni, Ryan can now […]

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I’ve written about Ryan Leitch before, but for those of you who don’t recognise the name, he’s the 18 year-old Auckland boy who topped the world in the Cambridge Geography exam last year. He’s also got muscular atrophy, and I reckon he’s a real inspiration for young disabled people in this country. Yet despite this, […]

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This is what I love seeing, disabled people doing awesome stuff. It was reported today in the Herald that year 13 Westlake Boys student Ryan Leitch “topped the world” in his NCEA Level 3 Geography exam, such a grade achieved by only around 36 students every year. It is of little consequence to his academic […]

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Because you could end up like the guy in this video. Be warned: this doesn’t feature some Disney-esque happy ending. The production is great and the suspense is high, but don’t say I didn’t warn ya…

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Taken from stuff.co.nz:
A centre that cares for severely disabled people faces having to turn people away next year because the Government is refusing to provide extra funding. The Chris Ruth Centre offers long-term, one-on-one care and specialist services for people in Christchurch with very high special needs who are too old to stay in the […]

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