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Kay Reynolds, champion of disabled, dies Thursday

EDITORIAL STAFF

The Guardian

Kay Reynolds, a champion of the rights of the disabled in Prince Edward Island for more than half a century, died Thursday at the Prince Edward Home in Charlottetown. She was 85.

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The funeral is to take place Monday from Central Christian Church at 11 a.m. Visiting hours are Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. at MacLean Funeral Home Swan Chapel.

Reynolds fought for the rights of the disabled since she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1949.

She was instrumental in the formation of the P.E.I. Council of the Disabled and the first Island Chapter of the Multiple Sclerosis Society and had long supported the work of Pat and the Elephant, the specialized transportation service utilized by Islanders with disabilities.

She served as a member of that service’s board of directors and continually fought for funding to help preserve it.
For her work, she was named Islander of the Year, an award sponsored by The Evening Patriot.

Reynolds was born in Dartmouth, Oct. 11, 1923, was educated at Prince of Wales College, and graduated from the P.E.I. Hospital School of Nursing in 1945.

Reynolds was a young mother and professional nurse when she was first diagnosed with MS.

She was able to continue working professionally for five years after the diagnosis, but her deteriorating health forced her to leave her job and that’s when she began helping people in a different way.

Reynolds loved nursing, particularly working in the maternity ward so caring for others came naturally to her and she continued to do it.

She taught home nursing for St. John Ambulance and ran the nurses’ registry until an hour before she moved from her home to the Dr. Eric Found Centre. She later moved into the Prince Edward Home to live but remained active in various charitable organizations until just recently.

A Guardian story on Reynolds which ran prior to a 2000 fund-raising dinner in her honour for Pat and the Elephant stated:
“When Kay took on the challenge, there was no Council of the Disabled, no Multiple Sclerosis Society on the Island, virtually no wheelchair ramps, no automatic doors, disabled parking spaces, access to jobs, independent-living facilities, powered wheelchairs and scooters, no Pat and the Elephant transportation service . . . no recognition that those with challenges have an equal right to live a full life on their own terms.”

There have been many positive changes in the years Reynolds has fought for the rights of the disabled and in 1993 her contributions were recognized when an independent living centre in Charlottetown was named in her honour.

Her involvement and positive influence continue. She sat in the provincial legislature as part of a very vocal and successful lobby to obtain provincial government funding for the first drugs available to treat multiple sclerosis.

Reynolds says the growth of Pat and the Elephant is one thing that gave her a sense of great satisfaction. It means she and many others have their independence and can contribute to their community.

She served until just recently on the board of Pat and the Elephant, the Council of the Disabled, Kay Reynolds Centre and the Quality Control Council for the Beach Grove and Prince Edward homes.

Reynolds insists she is simply one of many doing this work but she inspired many to get involved and to see their abilities, not their disabilities.

Editorial – Disability issues concern for all lslanders

With the right resources, reviewing services should help uncover and fix challenges faced by Islanders with disabilities

The Guardian
Thursday, December 20, 2007

Those people interested in the plight of the disabled on Prince Edward Island no doubt welcomed last Friday’s announcement by the province that it plans to put the Island’s disability services under the microscope. Those Islanders not particularly interested should also welcome the new initiative.

As Stephen Pate, an activist for persons with disabilities, puts it: “We know from the statistics that the baby boom bulge is coming — disability is a factor of aging — and so we know that the percent of the population that are disabled is going to rise.”

In other words, just because you don’t think ability issues are something you need to be concerned with now doesn’t mean they won’t become so in the future. So for purely selfish reasons, all Islanders need to pay attention to this issue.

But it’s the Islanders dealing with disability issues that the new initiative is specifically aimed at. A Disability Services Review Committee will review and get public input on the current legislation and services and see what needs to change.

The review committee will hold public hearings during the coming months while reviewing all aspects of disability services, including the Disability Support Program, which is administered by the province for Islanders with a qualifying disability. That program replaced the Family Support and Employability Assistance for People with Disabilities (EAPD) program and has come under attack from advocacy groups who feel the qualification criteria isn’t as accommodating as it should be.

The Disability Services Review Committee is expected to submit its final report in the fall of 2008 to Health Minister Doug Currie. In announcing the review committee and its mandate, the health minister pointed out that there are almost 22,000 Islanders reporting disabilities of some kind.

The review committee consists of people with first-hand knowledge of the challenges faced by persons of disability in the province and is setting forth on its voyage with a fair bit of goodwill.

Barry Schmidl says the new Liberal government seems to be more open to listening than the previous government was. Schmidl, a committee member, is also the executive director of the P.E.I. Council of the Disabled so it stands to reason he is in favour of the review. It also stands to reason that committee members like him will fight for the rights of persons with disabilities when it comes to the committee writing its final report.

While announcing the review Currie conceded that it was fulfilling an election promise made by the Liberals during the spring election campaign.

Let’s hope the review is a comprehensive one will and result in positive changes in the lives of persons with disabilities. No one should prejudge the intentions of the new government, but if the past is any indication studying issues is rarely the problem.

The problem is usually finding the money and political courage to act.

Shopping local is not the best advice

Thank goodness consumers will read the Octavian Group (Blake Doyle) article in the December 12th, 2007 Guardian and laughingly ignore it.

It was pure business tripe, sort of “support poor us we’re your wealthy merchant class.”

First Doyle argues a Deloitte and Touche study proves the trickle down effect of shopping locally. The Deloitte study is highly questionable. D&T have a long history of business association. Why should consumers trust their opinion?

Second, our economy is based on capitalism – the best use of capital. Governments and businesses source their products and services at the best prices possible. This is of course why so much manufacturing has moved off-shore.

Why should consumers, the lowest people on the economic totem pole, pay more for things than they could otherwise?

Third, the big-lie that supporting local merchants is good for all in the community has been proven false over and over. Merchants are capitalists trying to get rich on the backs of low priced local labour. Wages rates in the retail sector are some of the lowest in our economy.

Merchants do not invest their profits in the local economy any more than they have to. The wealthy pay proportionately fewer taxes and invests its profits in the stock market or personal consumption like expensive travel, none of which benefit the local economy.

If consumers can save a buck, they will. Voting with their dollars is the only way to force merchants to price their goods competitively.

Sorry Blake we’re not with you. Of course, I’ll bet dollars for donuts you shop at Amazon.com too.

Fire alarm at Atlantic Technology Centre causes some confusion

By Teresa Wright Constable

A fire alarm recently set off at the Atlantic Technology Centre in Charlottetown raised questions for a Charlottetown man about the building’s emergency evacuation procedures for people with disabilities.

Continue reading →

Serious setback in a sensitive project

Our civil service never set out to break the Disability Support Program but officials will have to fix it anyway.

EDITORIAL STAFF
The Guardian

We have to assume that the people who set up the Disability Support Program set out with the best possible intentions; it’s too bad that it took a human rights ruling to set them looking for the best possible methods.

On the surface, the DSP sounds like an excellent, even revolutionary, approach to dealing with the needs of disabled Islanders. It replaced a patchwork of assistance plans with a concerted effort to meet the needs of P.E.I.’s physically and mentally challenged citizens, and it stopped the degrading and inadequate practice of forcing people who needed help to declare themselves unemployable and turn to social assistance.

The trouble with the DSP has been that too many disabled Islanders have found that this one-size-fits-all system doesn’t fit them well at all.

The problems began when parents of disabled children found that they were to be treated as dependents up to the age of 25 and that families would be held responsible for contributing to their costs of care. It took a vocal opposition of parents and supporters to get the government to acknowledge that adulthood should start at the same age whether a person is disabled or not.

But that setback failed to spark a real re-examination of the DSP.

Now the P.E.I. Human Rights Commission has essentially sent the entire DSP back to the drafting room by ruling that its core questionnaire unfairly favours support for physical disabilities over support for mental disabilities.

The trouble is that once they return to their work, the designers of a disability support structure have an unenviable job. How, frankly, does one assign a dollar value to the impact of a disability? A lecturer could be paralyzed from the neck down and not lose any earning power, while some musicians could end a lifelong career by losing a fingertip. Who is to say how each should be assisted and where to set the limit for that assistance?

One can only feel empathy for the people in charge of administering such a system. They see individuals and their families with aching needs and have to adress those needs within the cold reality of a taxpayer-funded support system. Faced with someone who needs a simple piece of equipment, the disability support worker’s job should be straightforward. Faced with a family who may need lifelong respite help to cope with the care of a child, the case worker has tougher calls to make.

The genius of the DSP was that it gave power to Islanders with disabilities and their caregivers by allowing them to pick the services they offered.

The problem with the DSP was that it attempted to use a simple formula to determine just how much money each claimant could get.

That problem isn’t going to go away. Government will still have to pay for services to the disabled and it will still have deserving people who go away unhappy when the money runs out.

The only way to deal with these heartaches is for disability workers to do what the DSP purported to do in the first place. They have to allocate support while listening to the disabled. And they have to do what the DSP failed to do in this case; they have to keep talking and be willing to change the system when it proves unacceptable.

Disability Alert leader worried by silence on issues

Protest+at+Legislature Disability Alert leader worried by silence on issues photo Stephen Pate, leader of Disability Alert, a group advocating for the rights of the disabled, says he is worried about his issues disappearance from the provincial election campaign. Guardian photo

RON RYDER
Link: The Guardian

The leader of a group that advocates for the rights of the disabled is getting restless over his issue’s disappearance from the provincial election agenda.

Stephen Pate of Disability Alert has spent much of the election season on his own “Campaign of Hope” going to political events and presenting politicians with material arguing to an improvement to the province’s Disability Support Program.

“Are we going to get these people to take time to talk about disability in what is looking like a chaotic last week? I hope so.”

Early in the campaign, Pate said he wasn’t terrifically impressed by either the Conservative pledge to keep the funding promised in April’s budget or by the Liberal vow to make the Island disability tax credits match the federal credit.

But since then he’s been worried about what he sees as silence on the issue.

“In the legislature, there was time when the issues of disability came up on nine … days,” he said.

“And it wasn’t just the DSP, they were talking about learning disabilities about support in schools and communities. People were really digging into this. Basically now it’s nothing.”

Pate said he thought he had some success when he called a recent radio debate and got the leaders of the Island’s four political parties to lay out their disability plans in concrete terms.

He said the final days of the campaign may not be auspicious for his cause.

“This week was supposed to be about social issues and the two main parties said they’d have announcements on disability supports,” Pate said.

“Now with the poll results and it looking like there could be a change in government, they may shift priorities. There might be someone saying disability affects 14 per cent of the population, but we need an issue that affects 70 per cent.”

“Are we going to get these people deciding to take the time to talk about disability in what is looking like a chaotic last week? I don’t know. I hope so.”

Arthritis Society fights for recognition during election

The Guardian
The Arthritis Society is asking Islanders to make arthritis issues a priority during this election campaign to ensure the next government takes action.

P.E.I.’s Healthy Living Strategy has failed to address chronic disease management, says Rosie Keough, Arthritis Society board member.

“Despite being the greatest cause of long-term disability, arthritis is continually ignored. This is an amazing oversight when you consider that over one-in-five Islanders has arthritis,” Keough said.

Islander Mildred Gamble lives with Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS), a form of arthritis. Her doctor has attempted to treat her disease with drugs that are currently available on the P.E.I. public insurance plan, with little success.

In a news release, the Arthritis Society says that Gamble’s doctor would like her to try Humira, a biologic response modifier that has slowed and even stopped the progression of arthritis in other patients. While Humira will soon be available for people living with Rheumatoid Arthritis, Gamble will still not be eligible to receive it, as it will not be indicated on the P.E.I. Drug Formulary for AS.

“With no private drug plan, Mildred is relegated to continue using less effective drugs that are covered,” the Arthritis Society release says.

The society says P.E.I.’s drug plan is lagging behind other provinces.

It says it takes 44 months for a biologic medication for Rheumatoid Arthritis to be listed on the P.E.I. provincial formulary after approval by Health Canada. In other provinces the wait is as little as 10 months.

The society says P.E.I. is the only province currently not covering Celebrex.

It says Enbrel has not been approved for psoriatic arthritis in P.E.I.

The Arthritis Society recently surveyed the political parties about three major concerns: access to (and affordability of) medications, wait times for joint replacement surgery, and the need for another rheumatologist on the Island.

For full responses please see the the article

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