The Premier should stop playing games with the lives of Islanders with disabilities
By Stephen Pate – The story in today’s Guardian. Powered by Generous Soul – Charlottetown woman gets power chair from anonymous donor shows once again that PEI’s Disability Support Program is badly broken.
Islanders with disabilities are not being served by the $9 million the government spends. They must rely on charity.
Disability Alert brought this to the public attention almost one year ago on December 10, 2006. More and more people are aware of the problem and coming forward to fill in the gap. God bless Ian Hunter and all those hardworking and generous Lions. They have been doing this work for years.
Premier Ghiz should separate the two departments and give Social Services and Seniors a new Minister. He should fund this program to the level required and stop playing games with the lives of Islanders with Disabilities.
The Liberals before they were in power promised reform of the DSP. Where is that? Is there any new money to help?
All summer long we have seen a cascade of people who need help from the DSP but can’t get it. Phone calls from case workers are not returned. Emergency needs put into protracted paperwork jungles.
It’s not that they don’t have money at the DSP: it appears that more than $4 million dollars may have been lost through mismanagement. We are investigating that story and will come back shortly.
Where is the new government? They are going to study the problem at a cost of $100,000. Since we told them what the problems were along with Baker Consulting and every person who can’t get help, that is a truly lamentable waste of time and money. If you need help the last thing you want is your wheelchair dollars being used to pay high priced consultants in suits. Could the Ghiz government not have the decency to set up an interim emergency program to help people who need it now?
Minister Currie needs to put his attention to this program and fix it before another Islander with a disability has to suffer like Shelley. Otherwise he is highly likely to slip into Ballem-Gillan syndrome – a disability who’s symptoms include loss of memory of the people you represent and spontaneous prevarication on the subject of disabilities.
One of the problems is the joint ministry of Health and Social Services and Seniors. Health takes all Doug Currie’s attention and SSS gets the left-overs.
Premier Ghiz should separate the two departments and give Social Services and Seniors a new Minister. He should fund this program to the level required and stop playing games with the lives of Islanders with Disabilities.
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