There are two thousand six hundred and fifty-two
people that have disabilities in Canada who cannot take care of themselves
(Statistics Canada, 2010). Forty eight percent of Ontario’s disabled population
did not receive post secondary education (Toronto District School Board, 2001).
Even with an education, people with disabilities are making on average eleven
thousand dollars less than a person without disabilities (Toronto District
School Board, 2001). Ten percent of people living with disabilities in Ontario
are Adults, who cannot fully support themselves and rely on family members, or
support programs (Toronto District School Board, 2001).
This year, Ontario’s Ministry decided
to cut a program called Real Plans for Real Life Programs. This program
supports dozens of Ottawa families that have adults with disabilities. This
program “was run through $300,000 in funding for the Ontario Ministry of Social
Services” (CBC News, 2012) each year. With this money, this program was able to
“find day programs, jobs and respite care for parents of developmentally
disabled adults” (CBC News, 2012). Parents are supposed to raise their children
so that they can grow to be educated self-sufficient adults, being capable of
living and surviving on their own. However, sometimes your children are
disabled and not fully capable of taking care of themselves; this leaves their
parents with the task of taking care of their grown children. When this happens,
parents sometime need a little support, which is what the Real Plans for Real
Life program was doing. Now that it has been cut they are losing a very big
support system that they will now have to find elsewhere. Upon my research I
found a message from a parent that explains how much this program meant to
them, just by the minimal support it was able to gave: “It’s meant that I have
hope for a life with Tom, I have hope for a life with me... just to enjoy Tom
as a human being and not always as his caregiver” (CBC News, Jeno Jaworski,
2012).
Every person has the right to social
equality, social justice, and economic freedom (Hick, pg60). By the ministry
taking away this programs funding, they are also taking away the equality,
justice and freedom of the 40 families in Ottawa. These families severely
benefited from this program. The programs employees would create a solid
long-term plan for the adults with disabilities, to make the process easier on
their parents (CBC News, 2012). “The money is being moved to the Provincial
Service Coordination office, which provides some services for the disabled, but
doesn’t provide the same long-term planning aid for disabled clients” (CBC
News, 2012). Being offered a service is different than being able to get personal
with a staff member and create a plan that you and your child can both benefit
from. A short-term plan is also not the option; it will only help for a short
period of time. You need a long-term plan to be able to see the equality outcome,
which would show any progress being made from the plan that an employee from
Real Plans for Real Life would have made for you. When this program got cut,
the main concern would be respite care. We should be concerned with how these
parents of adults with disabilities will now find full time care for their son
or daughter while still continuing their life, whether it is going out on a
Friday night or going to work. This part of the program is being taken away
from the people causing inequality, which is not right. Everyone should have
the right to an equal life, and in this case respite care is what was allowing
adults with disabilities and their parents to have an equal life. You can take
a feminist perspective when looking at this program because for the majority it
will be the mom who becomes the child’s life long caregiver.
On average, women will have more interruptions with
their job then men because women have to take care after their children (Einam & Cuskelly, 2002). It is even more
severe when a woman has a child with disabilities because depending on the
level of care and the disability of the child the mother may not be able to
return back to work for numerous factors (Einam
& Cuskelly, 2002). These factors include being too fatigued keeping
up with both caring for the child and working and they also find it too hard
with the frequent doctors appointments and emergencies (Einam & Cuskelly, 2002).
“A gendered division of labor
exists in Canadian society that has resulted in women earning less than men,
and in addition, many women bear the primary responsibility of caregiving for
dependent family members. While there are income security programs in place to
assist women and families, they are often based on outdated conceptions and can
help perpetuate women’s disadvantaged position” (Hick, pg129).
The idea that it is mother’s
who will be taking care of their children with disabilities is very unfair
because it is denying women their right to work, among many other things that
they are being denied access to.
A parent is not supposed to be a caregiver when
their child becomes an adult however, when your child has a disability you
could possibly be a caregiver forever. I have two family members that are
twenty years old; they both have Muscular Dystrophy, which makes them unable to
live alone and fully take care of themselves. This disease has increased with
age and has had a huge strain on both their mother and grandparents because
they do have to live at home and they are now at a stage in this disease where
they need help to go to the bathroom, have a bath, or go to bed. This makes
their mother and grandparents a babysitter twenty-four hours, seven days a
week. The Real Plans for Real Life program would have been a huge asset to my
family members because it would have provided a long-term plan to help them get
through the difficulties they are now facing.
It is wrong for the government to give up a program that is helping many
families all because that money could go to other things. These people who are
losing this program are losing their equal conditions as a citizen in Ontario.
CBC
News,. (February 8, 2012) Families of
Disabled Adults Angry After $300K Program Cut. Retrieved From: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2012/02/08/ottawa-cut-program-disabled-adults.html
Einam, M., & Cuskelly, M. (February 6, 2002). Paid
Employment of Mothers and Fathers of an Adult Child with Multiple Disabilities.
Journal of Intellectual Disability
Research, Volume 46, Issue 2, Pages 158-167. Retrieved From: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.libproxy.auc.ca/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2788.2002.00383.x/full
Hick,
Steven,. (2007) Social Welfare in Canada:
Understanding Income Security. Toronto, ON: Thompson Educational
Publishing.
Toronto
District School Board,.(2001) Facts and
Statistics,. Retrieved From: http://www.tdsb.on.ca/_site/viewitem.asp?siteid=15&menuid=8564&pageid=7492
Statistics Canada. (January 29, 2010). Adults With Disabilities
That Need Help With Everyday Activities, By Sex and Age Groups, Canada, 2001
and 2006. Table 1. Retrieved From: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-628-x/2010015/tbl/tbl1-eng.htm
-Kahli
Kahli, I agree with your voice, and long term support is definitely something to be looked more closely into. It is a tragedy that there are so many people that are forgotten about when it comes to the support that is needed. I know that many of the people who are homeless have mental dissabilities and some of them have physical ones as well, but it seems as if once they hit the age of adult-hood the system pushes them out into a world that they are unable to function within. The support for those with dissabilities is not well known to most of the public, and for those who have the dissability it becomes lost efforts as they are even more uneducated. I feel the system definitely has to take a more public approach to those who need life-long assistance, even if they create group homes that provide the basics, it would be something. These homes would also give those who are educated a place to build on the support that could, and should be provided for these people.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your voice.
-Elizabeth
Very interesting blog Kahli! I also feel that short term support doesn't really help either because when that short term support is over with, well what happens next? The families will be back to square one with trying to find a support system to help them. It's really sad that they had to stop this program because it helped so many people. Having to take care of someone with a disability costs so much money because of all the extra stuff you may need in your home. It felt more touching to me when you added in what a parent said about the program being cut. It makes me wonder what they are doing now and if there living okay. It doesn't make sense to me on why they would cut such a great program to help people and families when we need programs like this. We need an increase in these programs not a decrease... no wonder why there is so much poverty.
ReplyDeleteHunter
I really enjoyed reading your blog. I wasn't aware of that program, Real Plans for Real Life, which I feel is also an issue for most Canadians. I feel as though Canadian citizens should have a bigger awareness as to the programs our country offers, in order to pass that knowledge along to the disabled population. It is not acceptable that the government took out that program since so many people relied on it. The disabled population has such a small voice because many people don't stop to think about them; instead most of us carry on with our own lives when really we should be helping them. I like how you added your own life experience, making this issue seem so much more real. It is sad to think that there is hope, only to have it taken away. It is also not fair to the caregivers having to give such extra help to their children/ family members. Eventually someone needs to take care of those caregivers, who will that be? This seems to be such a terrible cycle. If only there were more programs that were PERMANANT, maybe there could be hope in solving this issue, and helping those in need.
ReplyDelete- Meri-Beth
The government seems to be cutting the programs that are needed most...thanks for posting on this.
ReplyDeletePeople do not know what it is like to raise a child or multiple children who have disabilities, and for one day I wish they could experience this. When you talk to these mothers and fathers, they most often will say that they would not change a thing - and of course they wouldn't...these are their children! However sometimes these mothers (and fathers) need a break. Even if that break is for a couple hours one afternoon so this mother and/or father could go out for lunch, shopping, for a massage, or even take a nap! Funding for supports like this should never be cut...in fact there should be more!
I look up to mothers and fathers like this, as well as my mother and step-father for raising two children with special needs as well. These women and men are very strong, and should take pride in what they do. Disabilities vary. Some children need 24/7 care while others are more independent but could still never be left alone.
My mother is fortunate enough to have myself, and my three other siblings to help out with the two younger siblings with disabilities, as well as respite care.
In Sault Ste Marie, many families are looking for respite care for their children...It looks great on a resume but most importantly - you are giving a parent a deserved break!
Meagan (LGBT Group)
This blog was very touching.I can see why the topic was selected when you have such a personal connection to it. It is stories, like the members of you family who are directly affected by the governments cuts, that need to get to our governments. Our people are suffering directly from programs they are cutting and I don't feel like they are being held accountable for it. It's so sad that parents are having to take on the job of caregiver for their child and are losing the parent-child relationship when there are people that are qualified to help alleviate the strain this can put on families. This is going to create more mental healthy, emotional, physical issues in the long run, they way I see it, thus costing the government more money in health care for the family members. We can prevent some of those issues by helping families with adults with a disability cope.
ReplyDeleteAngele
This was really sad to read, its sad to think that the people that need help are getting it cut. There are some people that dont understand how big of an impact some programs have and at the same time they might just not care. Theres always something else on the agenda. This blog was very touching and expressed in a really good way.
ReplyDeleteTrista
I can't believe what your family has had to go through. I do not have anyone in my family that has disabilities so i can't imagine what it is like to have to care for someone every minute of every day. It must be such an added stress. It is frustrating that the government would take away such a good program and not even replace it with any other support. They should consider bringing it back or bring forth some sort of aid for these families.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your story.
Alexandra
I can compare this to aid for veterans with disabilities because when I did my blog on that topic the government was making cutbacks for many different assistance programs for these people. The government had just recently ended the cutbacks for few of the programs for disabled veterans. It seems to me that the government picks and chooses which social assistance is most important at which time and that is not right. With your blog they are cutting a very important program that helps out parents of disabled adults and recently are giving more assistance to veterans with disabilities. It makes me so angry that the government can just pick and choose which programs are more important at the time. To be honest, I believe that no program can be permanent as much as we can wish but they will always be short term with the government constantly changing their minds. Someone posted a blog about an Entrepreneurship program for people with disabilities, so now the money is being taken away from helping the parents with disabled adults into trying to get the disabled adults to find ways to create work for themselves but many of these disabled adults cannot work, as Kahli explained that some may need help into bed, to bath, to eat. Although their can be many disabled adults who are able to create work for themselves with the new EDP program which is great for the ones who are able but there are many who need care on a daily basis. If the Real Plans for Real Life program was kept and the EDP program was kept there would at least be some support for both kinds of disabled adults. It would also be equal support for both, cutting one and creating another is completely unfair and unequal as both need the same support.
ReplyDeleteAlysha