Tearing children away from loving parents, a headline bound to create a big reaction in our modern society.
We’ve moved past the bad old days when children were ripped away on racial grounds, just the memory of that decades past atrocity fuels debates and bad feelings on racial equality.
Public debate on the rights of LBTQ+ parents or prospective parents are ongoing but due to public outcry the actual removal of children is obviously unacceptable.
History shows that the removal of children has such a horrific negative effect on families and particularly the children, that agencies are hesitant to remove children, even when there is evidence of drug use, alcohol abuse, violence or even sexual abuse in the home. Even when children are removed, agencies work hard to reunite the family unit.
Unless there are disability issues in the home. That’s right in our society those with a disability continue to effectively have less rights than any other person in society. A prisoner walking out of prison, serving a term for child sexual assault stands a better chance of being reunited with their own child than an autistic person leaving hospital after back surgery.
For goodness sake, a person accused of child sexual assault is guaranteed a trial, a person with autism can be locked up indefinitely on the word of a doctor, in a mental health institution not a prison. I haven’t been to prison but I can’t imagine its any worse, it couldn’t be, we have laws about the humane treatment of prisoners.
Torture, sensory deprivation, the deliberate infliction of pain, use of electric shock etc are banned by the Geneva Convention. Foolish Americans, they didn’t need to send all those prisoners to Guantanamo Bay. They should have had them all diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. People diagnosed with ASD are exceptions to the convention as our pain and sensory systems work differently. And no, we do feel pain, but apparently it is different enough. Admittedly we can only be tortured in a therapeutic setting, and I haven’t heard about it happening a lot, I only know a few examples in the last few years, but there is a market for devices used for these forms of ‘therapy’.
So while there are convicted meth dealer/addicts whose children ostensibly live at home, where the deals, smoking and manufacture occur, and range along the streets, within 2 minutes of my house. An autistic mother who had physical difficulties impairing her movement has lost custody of her autistic child.
Because the NDIS will fund necessary supports for the individual but gives absolutely no support for a disabled person’s role as a parent. They will put hundreds of thousands of dollars into readying a disabled person to work, in any capacity. But not one cent may be used to help a parent care for their children. This I admit is planner dependant, some planners taking the view that parenting is a part of their normal life. But there are no guidelines to say a disabled person can be assisted in their parenting responsibilities.
And that is not the worst of it. Once in the ‘care’ of the Department of Child Protection, the child’s rights and needs are constantly tempered with the expense, ease, and ‘safety’ (what the department can be sued for) concerns of the department and its agencies.
So, the child is completely subject to the bureaucratic decision processes and budgets of a government agency. The needs of a regular child, food exercise, shelter may be somewhat met. But the ability to learn, form friendships, learn resilience or heaven for fend develop their skills in specialist area are considered completely unimportant. After school visits, sleep overs are too much trouble. Instruments and art supplies are unnecessary luxuries. A child under care cannot for instance learn to drive. There is nobody to negotiate rules and restrictions with the child (up to 17 years old) the rules are set down by an unfeeling mechanism that leaves no means for complaint.
For a ‘special needs’ child, one effected by poverty, abuse, or their own disability, there is no extra care, no extra consideration. Once in the system these children must be kept alive, at a ‘reasonable’ rate. Any action to assist with the child’s individual problems must be assessed against budget and potential public perception (safety to the public, favouritism and expense not informed perception).There is nothing to help them reach the ‘normal’ milestones that would enable them to start adulthood at an even footing with their peers.
I understand, disabled people and their families should be grateful. Grateful that they are allowed to live, grateful that they are not out on the streets fending for themselves, unless they are homeless (many homeless are disabled) in which case they should be grateful not to be in prison ( a disproportionate number of disabled are imprisoned) ad infinitum. Disabled people are treated within the disability/therapy sector as if they should be grateful, mindful of others needs above there own and infinitely patient, there is no level of ‘compromise’ that is enough for a disabled person to make, after all hasn’t society compromised enough just by allowing we parasites to exist. Welcome to civilised society.
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