CRUcial Times Issue 25 - Feature Article

Making good public policy

Christine Douglas has a long history of advocating for people with disabilities. She is especially conscious of policies that deny people their full identity, dignity and moral right to be a part of the whole community. Christine is now working as a counsellor, specialising in issues relating to people with disabilities and their families.

We need to keep reminding policy-makers that the issues of social policy are essentially moral, not technical.

Social policy is not about others; it is about us. Policy is never made in a vacuum, although at times it seems that way. It is set within a particular time and a particular culture, and infused with particular values and assumptions. It is made, one would hope, in response to particular needs. It seems however, that as bureaucracy grows, policy, policy-makers and the practitioners who implement those policies, are becoming more contemptuous of, rather than relevant to, us as citizens. This is particularly evident when it comes to policies that relate to citizens with a disability or citizens who, for whatever reason, are sidelined on the margins of our society.

Policy, as defined by the dictionary, is a plan or method based on a long-range or overall view of things. In other words a policy expresses a vision, towards which all aims, goals and strategies are focused and gain potency and coherence. Herein lies the difficulty, because it seems that current policies are made without that vision; they are short-term responses to crisis situations made under constant budgetary constraints. The social dimension of policy making is lost because of the primacy of other agendas, and good policies relating to people with disability are left floundering. What will break this impasse? How is it that in 2002 we are still fighting for ordinary, meaningful and included lives for people with disabilities?

Part of the dilemma lies in the residual effects of the English Poor Laws of the Nineteenth century, which were the precursors of social policy today. Notions of the 'deserving poor' are still alive. They can be sensed in the Ascertainment policy of the Education Department, and in the rationalisation of health services. How else do we explain the alarming rise in exclusionary policies that are bent on keeping people with disability, especially those with challenging behaviour, congregated in our less affluent suburbs, warehoused in sub-standard boarding houses with appalling levels of support, and young people with high levels of support languishing in nursing-homes for the aged? Any number of defenses may be raised to explain this state of affairs but deep down, either consciously or unconsciously, there is a message that says: Are these people really worth it? Our dollars would be best spent elsewhere.

The climate for exclusionary policies has been bolstered by the rise in global terrorism and its recent proximity to our shores. The drive to set out more defined boundaries of 'difference' (who's in and who's out in our country) will make the rise in exclusionary practices in the disability arena even harder to shake. We may have moved from the two-hundred-bed institutions of previous decades but the institutionalised practices that went with them have crossed over and made themselves at home in the rigid impersonalised characteristics of group-home living: clustered recreational activities; the stripping of identity; the countless lost moments of friendship; and wasted opportunities that mark the lives of people with disability. It is death by a thousand cuts: in the slow, inexorable wasting of a person's life and the endless waiting for inadequate funding and accommodation vacancies, endless meetings, and retelling of stories simply to gain one tiny margin of relief - a stopgap victory over an issue that will re-emerge at a later stage.

Where is the outrage? Where is the action? Where is the cry for restorative justice? Where is the compassion and where is our egalitarian spirit? How can we prevent policies that relate to people with disability being a form of social control? These are vexing and complex questions that require serious and concerted consideration if strong, inclusionary policies are to be the result.

We need policies that bestow esteem rather than stigma on people. We need a balance between the ideology of individualism (which receives such powerful support from market values) and the notion of collective responsibility. We need to keep reminding policy-makers that the issues of social policy are essentially moral, not technical. Policy makers need to explore different types of moral transactions, embodying notions of gift-exchange, and reciprocal obligations that bring about social and community relations. We need
to challenge the belief that human service
systems are actually concerned with the enhancement of individual and collective wellbeing because we know that the policy aims of such systems are sometimes so modest they do little more than prevent a lowering of living standards, and in some cases, do outright harm to people.

At the same time we must also examine our own hearts. If policy is not made in a vacuum, but according to what is ultimately tolerated and legitimised by the whole society, whether this legitimacy comes about through our apathy or our outright support, then we all have a part to play. If it is not a direct part then it is through our relationships with our neighbours, our associates, our churches, the educational systems that we or our children attend, our sporting affiliations, and our entertainment preferences. How do these groups and individuals regard people with disability and how are their actions, and ours, reflected in the policies of our nation?