CRUcial Times Issue 29 - Editorial

editorial

The poet Scott wrote of ‘the sickening pang of hope deferred’. Such is the experience of many in the disability sector.

Many people believe that little has changed in the lives and opportunities for people with disabilities. Bureaucracies are bigger and more complex. They appear more powerful. An abundance of rules and policies intrude on the private lives of people with disabilities. There is more funding but there is still only a limited menu of what can be bought with that funding. Programs that allow flexible use of money are being curtailed. It continues to be difficult for parents to enrol children with disabilities in regular schools. Unemployment or sheltered workshops still await school leavers with significant disabilities. Adults with disabilities are still moved around Queensland to fill beds in group homes.

The temptation is to give up hope, to speak of lost dreams and resignation, to forecast little improvement in the social conditions for people with disabilities. However loss of hope has drastic consequences. Energy and creativity become depleted. People feel isolated, powerless and helpless. Actions for positive change seem pointless. People are driven to desperate measures, such as the dumping of family members on the steps of government departments; acquiescence to the dominant congregated segregated service models; submission to the ill conceived ideas of content free managers; assent to the quick-solution orientation of bureaucrats and politicians.

Let us dwell on what hope is left to us. There is naïve hope that government will deliver all of the answers and all of the money we require. However this sort of hope gives away the power that ordinary citizens have to find solutions to issues that occur in ordinary families and communities.

Such hope rests on two false assumptions. Firstly there is an assumption that money is the answer to all problems, when in fact it is only part of the answer. There is also an assumption that other people have the solutions to our struggles and that we must wait for approval or assistance from someplace else. Our history shows many examples where it has been ordinary people who have led the way. For example, in the 1950s it was families who established schools for children with disabilities. Likewise, in the 1980s it was people with disabilities, families and community sector members who established personalised services.

Another hope available to us is fickle hope that sees us lurching from one fad to the next, seeking quick fixes to complex human issues, such as the mass adoption of individual planning. Such fads are often based on simplistic analyses of problems and provide only short-term assistance.

We encourage, instead, a hope that brings lightness. Such hope gives buoyancy to dreams and ideas. It is a balm to the rejection perpetuated by fellow community members, a salve to the rocky path of needs assessments, funding guidelines and accountability processes. Fervent hope helps us seek relief from all that works against the human spirit. Such hope is fuelled by the voices of the vulnerable and is driven by a sense of injustice. Inspirational hope nurtures dreams and wishes, and an ardent commitment to a changed and just society.

Too often, all this feels like elusive hope, and it is for this reason that we must all find those people or things in which we can place our faith. We can find it in ourselves to be more courageous. We can seek alternative theories and advice to bolster our practical responses. We can recognise the life sapping nature of corporate culture and find the alternative ways for human services to be. We can engage in acts of resistance even when we feel at our most powerless. We can resist the pressures to move away from seeking ordinary and valued lives for people with disabilities. We can choose not to close our hearts and minds to the struggles of people with disabilities, families and dissident workers, all of whom seek better ways.

We can listen with our hearts and minds, not just thorough the filters of society’s stereotypes. We can connect with like-minded others, and also provide encouragement to those who think differently. Seeking hope, courage and the will to endure for the long haul is also a journey of the soul. Those who are in the lives of people with disabilities, seeking changes in our service systems and in our wider society, find themselves looking for ways of sustaining this vocation. Writers in this edition of CRUcial Times share with us their journeys of hope, and provide some insight into those things that have nurtured and sustained them. Shelley wrote a message for us all when he said: ‘No change, no pause, no hope, yet I endure.’ We all need to find those things that will sustain our commitment to change and our faithfulness to the voices of the vulnerable.