Special Schools Debate ? July 2005

[Colin_and_Shelagh]

The Disability Rights Commission has issued a briefing paper on the issue of inclusion. It takes issue with some of Mary Warnock's views.

 

Disability Rights Commission

 

ASDs are not mentioned.

[oracle]

ASD are not mentioned. No but a sense of belonging and human rights are - so where in the report does it take into account the fact that children with ASD can often have problems 'belonging' in a family never mind a school And where in the report does it take into account their human rights

 

Apologies folk but once again I feel as if our children have been left out and do not count. This is the very reason why I campaign for ASD to be recognised as a 'seperate' disability - because no one appears to realise that it is different.

 

Carole

Edited August 4, 2005 by carole

[mossgrove]

I am with Carole on this one.

 

Many autistic children do not want to be included, especially in a class size of 25+, the truly dispiriting thing about this is that the DRC assume that they assume that they are speaking on behalf of all children with disabilities, and people in power seem to accept this unquestioningly.

 

They do not speak for me or my children, and they do not speak for children with autism or their parents, and I want them to stop.

 

Simon

[oracle]

I want them to stop too Simon and AIM will respond to this but parents must also respond to underline just how 'removed' from reality these people actually are.

 

I have an adult friend with AS who has been telling me for years that the DRC are not making any allowances for people with ASD. He is right.

 

Carole

[Colin_and_Shelagh]

I agree entirely with Simon and Carole.

 

Mary Warnock makes the point that there are many different kinds of disability.

 

Simply to talk about 'disabled children' as though the issues concerning, say, a wheelchair user and a child with an ASD are the same is absolute nonsense. And yes, it makes me angry.

 

Colin

[hopeful]

I went to a mainstream school and I sincerely wish I had not. I would have been better off by far, both socially and academically, in an Asperger school. It might be said that participation in mainstream education gave me some flavour of 'normality', but at what cost? Being tormented out of my wits, and excluded by the other pupils from their social networks, leaving me terrified a decade on of anyone not paid to work with 'unusual' people? Comprehensive education is a pack of nonsense, never extended to the adult world for obvious reasons, based on the illusion that people with different aptitudes, personality types and 'behavioural tendencies' somehow belong together. It is to blame for a great deal of the grief that even many 'mainstream' pupils, never mind 'unusual' ones, are forced to endure. At the extreme it is responsible for the sheer bedlam that afflicts many schools, due to disruptive and even violent behaviour from pupils, who are either being forced against their will into a basically inappropriate environment, or who in some cases, let's face it, are just plain bad.

Edited August 4, 2005 by hopeful

[Canopus]

The trouble is, AS specific schools didn't exist 15 or so years ago. I was depressed and fed up at a state secondary school that was failing to provide for my needs, so ended up at a special needs residential school. It was not specifically designed for kids with AS and was a generally unpleasant institution. I suppose in a way someone of my age with AS lost both ways.

[oracle]

I suppose in a way someone of my age with AS lost both ways.

 

The sad thing is that our kids are continuing to lose out because nothing is changing and nor will it while bodies like the DRC publish reports like this

 

Carole

[call me jaded]

I've not read the DRC yet, but I do think Bert Massey is being deliberately provocative in many of the things he is doing to stir up the disability debate. A few weeks ago he inferred that disabled people experience more profound exclusion than black people. Ouch! took the following view:

 

Massie: exclusion "more profound

for disabled people"

by Ouch! staff

 

Thursday 16 June, 2005

 

In a speech used to launch a national disability debate and website last week, Disability Rights Commission chairman Bert Massie sparked controversy when he appeared to say that disabled people experience more profound exclusion than black people.

 

What was meant by these apparent "we've got it worse than you" comments? And is the DRC jockeying for position with the other minority groups before they move into one office block to create a single equality commission?

 

Let's look exactly at what was said and explore some of the complexities of equality and discrimination.

 

What did Bert Massie say?

In a press briefing to the BBC at the launch of the national debate on disability, Mr Massie said: "neglect and institutionalised exclusion is even more profound for disabled people than those barriers correctly highlighted in Lord McPherson's report on the murder of Stephen Lawrence."

 

What was the McPherson report, and what does it have to do with disability?

The murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993, and the circumstances surrounding it, were investigated by an inquiry chaired by Lord McPherson. The subsequent report criticised the Metropolitan Police's handling of the case and accused the force of institutional racism.

 

Interestingly, the McPherson report and inquiry took place at about the same time as the study by the Disability Rights Task Force on discrimination against disabled people. This study was launched with a view to creating new disability legislation. It is perhaps not surprising that the idea of institutional racism floated in the McPherson report influenced their thinking, leading to the idea of institutional disablism. And so we see the public sector duty contained in the new 2005 Disability Discrimination Act aims to combat institutional disablism.

 

In what way is institutional disablism worse than institutional racism?

Bert Massie hasn't denied that institutional racism exists. What he has said is that the exclusion faced by disabled people is more pernicious. He said that this is because exclusion of disabled people has become normalised - "ever present but invisible".

 

He said: "Despite major steps forward concerning our legal rights, our lives remain peripheral to the core concerns of policy makers, public bodies, service providers and others who shape our society, including the media".

 

Is there any hard evidence that disabled people face the worst exclusion?

The most sobering figures relating to disabled people are always those around healthcare in the UK. People with a learning disability are 58 times more likely to die before the age of 50 than other people; it's also been noted that learning disabled women have far lower rates of routine screening for things like cervical and breast cancer.

 

There are also a range of life and death issues that affect disabled people, such as the refusal of treatment in DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) cases where the medical profession make what are said to be subjective judgements about the value of a disabled person's life.

 

Do disabled people face greater exclusion than black people? What do black disabled people have to say about this?

Julie Charles, chief executive of Equalities, the National Council for Disabled People and Carers from Black and Minority Ethnic Communities, was highly critical of the remarks made by Bert Massie.

 

"How I read these remarks is that Bert Massie is saying that if you are a disabled person you have a tougher time than people who are black or Asian. I think it's a dangerous statement and it's not inclusive. I'm black, I'm a woman and I'm also disabled ,and I would never make that judgement.

 

"A white disabled person cannot say that they are suffering more than a non-disabled black person. Black people are at the bottom of the labour market, we are at the bottom when it comes to education, we are at the bottom when it comes to health and social services and Independent living.

 

"Hearing these remarks makes me think that the issues and views of our community will never be taken forward by the DRC because of the views of the chairperson, and that's pretty scary. My advice to Bert is to be extremely careful when he's making comparisons between a disabled person and a black non-disabled person."

 

She added that she would be interested to hear what Trevor Phillips, chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, has to say about Mr Massie's remarks.

 

Ouch sent a copy of Bert Massie's press briefing to the CRE. A spokesperson for the organisation said they didn't see his remarks as a comparison of the two minority groups.

 

"Bert Massie is right to suggest that 'institutional disablism' exists, and that this is leading to the enforced segregation of people with disabilities. It is exactly this form of invisible discrimination that the Government's Equalities Review has been set up to identify.

 

"We are sure that Bert Massie was not trying to compare one form of inequality with another. We all recognise that different forms of inequality exist which sometimes require different remedies or solutions.

 

"The CRE, the DRC and other equality partners are united in wishing an end to 'institutional disablism' and the enforced segregation of disabled people."

 

Another view from a black disabled person comes from Nigel Brown (34) , a wheelchair user from Bracknell. He says his experiences of institutional racism and disablism have led him to think that it's hard to compare the two, although he says that he believes people see his wheelchair before they see the colour of his skin.

 

Born in London to parents who came from Ghana and Jamaica, he feels that as a black disabled man he has suffered entrenched discrimination in the jobs market on the grounds of both race and disability.

 

Why might Bert Massie be being deliberately provocative right now?

The DRC is a relative minnow in the equality body scene, having only been in existence since 2000. In 2007 or 2008, the DRC will cease to be and disability will become part of an umbrella body looking after the interests of all minority groups. The combined organisation is to be called the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR).

 

Launching the disability debate last week, Bert Massie gave some indication of the way in which the DRC might seek to influence the agenda to keep disability rights high on the list of priorities after 2008, when the DRC will cease to exist and the CEHR takes over He said:

 

"Post-DRC, we want to ensure the CEHR pushes forward the frontier of disability rights and continues the momentum towards a society in which disabled people can participate as equal citizens.

 

"That is why we are now launching The Disability Debate. We want to identify and articulate the big priorities for a new disability agenda in a manner which provides a roadmap for both CEHR and Government over the next 10-15 years."

 

So, by putting disability on the agenda in headline-grabbing terms such as this, it could be argued that the DRC is showing that disability is not going to be a lesser player in the new body.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/news/btn/massie_exclusion.shtml

[smallworld]

Wrote a reply to this and have just deleted it. It's too contentious a subject for me. I just wanted to say that I think you cannot compare these two 'discriminations' because they're incomparable.