Monthly Archives: January 2007

Human Rights Hearing Second Day

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The second day of hearings in the Human Rights complaints against the Disability Support Program completed the testimony of the parents with Carolyn Bateman and Margaret Murphy.

Carolyn Bateman at Human Rights hearing

Both parents described in some detail their lives and challenges living with autistic children.

After two days, one can only ask – how could the government abuse these children and parents so grossly? What kind of public shame will it take to make Pat Binns realize this is wrong?

The thread that runs through both days of testimony is the love and devotion of these parents under trying circumstances. It is almost unbelievable how they have surrendered their lives to look after their children who have become disabled with autism.

There was a moment in the afternoon when Margaret Murphy was relating what happened when she and her husband got caught in a snow storm on the causeway. When then got home, her teenage daughter made her promise to pick out another set of parents because she could not look after her autistic brother on her own. Her daughter wanted to find the couple and ask them over to supper to talk about it. Margaret did as her daughter asked and found a couple. She added “Who ever asks their parents to find a replacement in case they die?”

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Disability funding complaint goes to human rights commission

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CBC TV
Three P.E.I. families are appearing before the Human Rights Commission Tuesday to complain about the province’s cap on support for adult children with disabilities.

Carolyn Bateman’s 24-year-old son Adam has severe autism. She and her husband spend more than $60,000 a year taking care of him. The province caps its support at $36,000 for a person 18 or over.

There is not enough money for disabled adults to have a life of their own, says Carolyn Bateman.

“We believe that it’s at such a low rate that it makes it impossible for families to ever have their adult child live outside the family home,” said Bateman.
(See link to CBC for rest of story)

Parents of autistic children allege discrimination under support program

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Human rights hearing told province’s disability support program needlessly punitive and falls short of delivering services it promised to families

Lawyers Karen Campbell, right, and Jacqueline O’Keefe talk prior to the start of a human rights hearing in Charlottetown Tuesday. Campbell represents four families alleging discrimination under the province’s disability support program. O’Keefe represents the P.E.I. Human Rights Commission. (Guardian photo by Heather Taweel)

RON RYDER
The Guardian

Families of children with autism ripped into the province’s disability support program at a provincial human rights hearing Tuesday, saying the plan discriminates against the disabled families it was set up to assist.

Parents Vic and Colleen Douse and Brad and Dale Wonnacott told a panel chaired by Lorraine Thompson that the DSP is needlessly punitive and falls short of delivering the services it promised to families.

Vic Douse said the screening tools and the income test system set up for claims seem to make it impossible to reach even the DSP theoretical ceiling of $3,000 per month in financial support.

“It’s the halving and the halving and the halving,” he said under questioning from the claimants’ lawyer, Karen Campbell.

Vic Douse said his 13-year-old daughter Jewel is autistic and has been prescribed 40 hours per week of applied behavioural analysis as a therapy. But he said he has been unable to get government to either approve or pay for the therapy prescribed by his daughter’s physician.

“It’s like telling someone that they need 40 chemotherapy treatments, but they’ll only get 20,” he said. “Then you say government will only pay for 10. If you don’t get better it’s not a surprise.”

Colleen Douse said they were faced with a dilemma that saw government willing to pay $10 per hour for a therapist to work with their daughter at home, while the provincial education system was paying $22 per hour for people with the same skills.

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PEI needs a serious school of Computer Science

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What we need on PEI is successful high tech development on the scale of Slemon Park

The best way to make that happen is through the establishment of a serious Computer Science program at UPEI including graduate studies.

I don’t mean to denigrate the current department but their own website says it: only 9 in the faculty. Update – in 2010 the number has shrunk to 6 professors.

‘Students from our department have an excellent record of placement at the country’s top graduate schools, including University of Toronto, Waterloo, British Columbia and McGill.’

If your goal is prepare students to go onto other schools, they will. When they graduate they get jobs somewhere else.

You can’t develop a serious IT sector without brain power: young people with graduate degrees in computer science. Microsoft couldn’t even think about a lab here. They need hundreds and hundreds of the latest graduates to come up with cool technology.

When I had Aquilium here in the 90′s we were doing leading edge stuff for back then. We could not find top programmers et al we needed simply because UPEI was not churning them out.

I gotta go practice guitar. This is depressing.

Human Rights Hearing told autistic children abandoned by DSP

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The Human Rights Commission hearings into the complaints against the Disability Support Program started today in Charlottetown.

Jacqueline O'Keefe of HR Commission and Karen Campbell for parents

The hearings are expected to take 4 days. The case was made compellingly that the Province abandoned these children and parents.

The facts and complaints are similar among 4 sets of parents with 4 autistic children. Autism is the most common neurological disorder affecting children says the Autism Society Canada.

Two of the parent sets gave testimony today and it was emotional and convincing. In the morning there was one point where there wasn’t a dry eye. It is inconceivable that these parents have held up for ten years under their loads with diminishing support from the DSP.

The cost of treating an autistic child can run $40,000 per year or more. These parents are hardworking people who have spent all their money, mortgaged their homes and are at the end of their financial and emotional resources. The government, on the other hand, is basically downsizing their support to autistics until it will disappear.

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People have been leaving PEI for 100 years

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Out migration of youth is not a real crisis on PEI. Islanders have left the Province for more than 100 years looking for adventure and their fortune. PEI is just too small and limited in resources to support all its sons and daughters.

In 1891 the population of PEI was a surprising 109,000, not far off from today’s 139,000. A downturn in the economy and natural resources reduced the population to 88,000 by the late 1920’s. The population has been climbing in fits and starts since then.

Most of my friends from the 50’s and 60’s in rural PEI are long gone to jobs in other provinces and the States. Everyone has relatives in the Boston States or Ontario. When I came back in 1975, I remember another out-migration to the west for jobs in ‘78. It happened again in 1983 during the recession and so on.

I have 5 children, only one is left on PEI. Will is in the high tech sector: he left here and tripled his income in no time. Laura went to law school away and stayed for a job in Toronto. She needs the income to pay off her student loan. Gabe and Allison have lived in Ontario for so long; I doubt they could contemplate living on PEI.

Except for government jobs and a few well paying jobs in the aerospace, IT, or manufacturers like DCL, there just isn’t the market on PEI for good paying jobs for young people. So they leave which is what they’ve been doing for 100 years. Some people come back but most don’t. Otherwise our population would be 500,000 by now.

Disability is everyone’s problem as we age

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I’ve had my silly walk all my life. If I’d have been smart I could have been on Monty Python with John Cleese and made a fortune. When someone with an obvious problem like me ends up in a wheelchair, people aren’t overly surprised.

That is not the norm for disability. Only 1 in 20 disabilities are obvious from an early age. Most disabilities result from the sudden onset of an event, like Gary Gray’s.
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Human Rights Hearings Tomorrow

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The Human Rights Hearings into the DSP complaints start tomorrow

IRAC hearing room, 5th floor
134 Kent Street
Charlottetown, PE
Start 9:30 am

Try to be there. Support Islanders with disabilities.

Related Stories
* Human Rights Commission…DSP
* Parents Band Together, Guardian

Gary Gray finds DSP abusive, opts out

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Gary Gray, stroke victim

SP: Gary Gray, our guest contributor, was past manager of the O’Leary, PEI Credit Union. He has been living in the Montague area for the past 14 years. He is a stroke survivor and an Islander with a disability.

My name is Gary and I had my own experience with the DSP (Disability Support) program. After a rather major stroke in 2002 my care giver applied for assistance under the program. I was approved but only after some rather abusive comments by the DSP.

The following year I was visited for my review. The same DSP worker was so abusive that I was completely shaken. I was shaken to the point that I stopped cashing my DSP cheques. During that visit, I requested some additional help. I was asked for my OT’s (occupational therapist) recommendation. I obtained the recommendation with no problem and tried to contact the DSP worker. To no avail, she had just disappeared.

So next year a new DSP worker came to do my review. I gave her 11 un-cashed cheques. The 12th came in after her visit and is still in my cupboard. I told her that I wanted to be taken off the program: I had suffered enough from the stroke and with dealing with my slow recovery. I did not need the abuse that I had been given through the DSP program.

I found myself in a very fragile state both mentally and physically for some time after my stroke. The DSP program was more abusive than supportive. Continue reading →

Great night at Baba’s – the jury is out on guitar synthesizer

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Sorry to take to long to do this. I had the meeting day from Hell yesterday: big name in medical community on disability and then the Minister and his Deputy on disability.

So Wednesday night at Babba’s? It went pretty cool. The guitar / man / synthesizer interaction was a little rough on the first song, Mean Hearted Woman which has a Hootchie Cootchie Man thing going. I was using the hold pedal for the slide from E to G to A. Thought it would sound great – sucked big time.

Audience feedback was solicited and it came. Ivan told me later it was jarring on his ears. OK. Andrea said it sounded noisy. Lucky I dropped the Hold thingy half way through the song.
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