CRUcial Times Issue 27 - Editorial

Jane Sherwin

As humans, we tend to simplify problems in order to understand them, and we utilise simple solutions to try and solve them. Money has been seen as the simple solution to the complex problems of a chaotic human service system, of services that struggle to do well, and of families and individuals who struggle to participate on an uneven playing field.

Additional new money has been delivered to the Queensland disability sector, and it is yet to be seen whether money will deliver us from all our problems. More funding is welcomed, however the acute danger is that the lives of people with disabilities will be held together with bandaid solutions, and that Queensland will see more of the ‘same old’ responses: group homes and day centres, rather than responses that enable lives to be meaningful, joyful, fulfilled and with the shared richness of community participation and relationships.

For lives such as these, where people can participate in society as citizens, where services are in their rightful supportive place, the funds must be used to allow positive and enduring change at the level of individuals, families, communities, services and systems. While the sector has issues to address in the short term, we must not lose sight of what’s needed for the long term.

How the funds are spent will send signals to the community sector about what government thinks is important. If the government is serious about enduring positive change, about system and service reform, then funds will be spent in ways that improve the capacity of people to have authority in their own lives, and of services to meet needs in responsive ways and to encourage social integration and valued participation in community life. We will see the funds spent in ways that are focused on the future, and mindful of the past. We will also see innovation used as a vehicle for social change.
The challenge is to get the old ideas out of our heads. All that is new is not necessarily good. And all that appears new is not necessarily new. Group homes, cluster housing, villages and day centres have been tried in a range of guises all over the world in the past. They have resulted in split communities: the haves (those with ordinary lives, opportunities for decent living, education, jobs, hobbies, the normal hubbub of community life) and the have-nots (vastly limited experiences of the real world, limited control over their own lives, protected from ordinary community risks, but exposed to the risks of models with congregation and segregation at their core). They did not contribute to communities of tolerance, acceptance, and diversity because those who brought diversity and required tolerance and acceptance were not present. It is also clear that investment in bricks and mortar produces limited dividends: a large amount of money gets tied up in fixed ways of responding to people’s needs, thereby taking away from opportunities to use the money flexibly.

At times of injections of new money into the system, we are faced with three important concerns. Firstly, naming the issues accurately: understanding the current major concern primarily as a service viability issue is simplistic and short sighted. Blind faith in assessments, models, checklists, glossy documents, standardization, and seeing people as packages and services as market outlets are serious threats to true social justice and will not lead to positive reform.

Secondly we need to expand the range of responses to people’s needs through both the structures and the processes whereby people get support to live decent lives. The last few years in Queensland have shown that when people receive new money, they have mostly had to purchase supports from an existing and narrow menu of service arrangements.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, we must invest in people. We must build capacity in service leaders and workers to better meet the needs of people with disabilities and families. We must build capacity in individuals and families to forge their own lives. We must provide ongoing assistance to allow them to do this.

This is an important time in our history. In years to come will we look back, and say ‘what a wasted opportunity’? Or will we be relieved that we took this opportunity to move forward, to increase our expectations about what is possible through creating new knowledge, through innovation and through enabling people to do better?