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How neo-liberal ideology affects the lives of people with disabilities

By Peter Gibilisco - posted Wednesday, 17 December 2003


This paragraph outlines a rights-based platform for individualised services of care/support for eligible "people with disabilities". Do I not have a desperate need and an unquestioned right to a HomeFirst package?

However, those administering the HomeFirst package may believe this right to be diminished because I already receive 16 hours a week of care/support assistance from Linkages. I started my Linkages care plan in August of 1997 at the maximum number of hours they could allow me. The 16-hour limit prevails today but my disease and care needs have progressed and my ability to live independently without adequate assistance has diminished since then.

The unmet care needs for those eligible "people with disabilities”

According to the Victorian Council of Social Services (VCOSS), the government promised state-wide an additional 100 HomeFirst packages (pdf, 65Kb) for the period 2003-04. The HomeFirst program had therefore gained a 22.3 per cent increase in funding, the largest of all Victorian disability services. However, the government only prescribed a $6 million increase in the appointment of disability service programs, with $4.8 million to go to the provision of HomeFirst places. This means that the cost to the government is about $50,000 for each place taken up on the HomeFirst program. Also, VCOSS argues that such an increase in funding will only scratch the surface of the demand for the HomeFirst places in Victoria.

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The practical delivery of HomeFirst places will, to some degree, alleviate the chances of young Victorians with disabilities having to move into nursing homes to receive adequate care. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report describes HomeFirst as "an alternative, proactive and lower-cost service to shared supported accommodation". Despite this, VCOSS is of the opinion "the disability services budget increase was minimal in real terms", as "the bulk of the increase will be used to cover award wage increases, including parity wage claims". It proclaims that the budget is a major setback for people with disabilities who believed the state disability plan held the provision for a real inclusive Victoria.

According to VCOSS, there has been an increase of just over five per cent in the budget for the allocation of disability services (from $766.5 million in 2002/03 to $813 million in 2003/04). Of these funds, $6 million where allocated directly to the demand contingencies of disability services. That is, a treasury fund designed to keep up with the budgetary constraints caused by population growth. Therefore, VCOSS is of the opinion that Victorians with a disability "can expect little change in overall service levels from the budget". This raises some very daunting issues in relation to social policy, and especially those of disability services.

Marta Russell, a disability activist and author from America, argues that the market-mechanised approaches of current political structures (namely Third Way and neo-liberal) have created a diminished capacity for social policy that incorporates the public needs of the disabled. Russell says it like this:

In an era where both [political] parties have become worshipers of the market and are owned by investors and corporations, the matter has become bipartisan. Neo-liberal and Third Way politics both replace redistributive goals with a market approach catering to business-class needs and both adopt the supply-side theory that the economy is burdened by overly-generous welfare provisions.

In short, Russell points to what many government officials believe, namely that profit maximisation or budget surpluses are hindered by generous spending on social policy. This defines the current political processes that have provided for a system that has reduced the provision of state welfare to a position of market-driven citizenship.

Welfare, according to social democrats should be distributed on a rights basis, as apposed to a needs basis. This is an essential factor in fostering an egalitarian society. Most Third Way sympathisers bolster their marketised beliefs by understanding traditional social democratic welfare policies as antiquated. However, in many ways it was their initially empathetic welfare policies that helped deliver those collective bodies with the social empowerment to move groupings of people, like those with disabilities, from the political margins to the mainstream.

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Conclusion

HomeFirst is a disability services package that would, in many ways, alleviate undue sufferance and hardship for me and many others if made more broadly accessible. However, the granting of the HomeFirst package has thus far eluded me, even though I was granted urgent status more than a year ago. I have developed an excellent standing in academia of late, and the extra workload (which I enjoy and - I think - have been worthy of) has created many difficulties with Friedreich’s Ataxia. First, there is the trouble with transfers and other daily activities: second, there is the need for the use of medicalised therapies that can reduce the severity of the illness.

Globalised politics has bought forth international benchmarked positions on how to economically deliver a budget surplus, or a profit, leaving little room for human problems like social exclusion. For instance, social policy is globally noted as burdensome to a marketised economy. Today it is economically rational to reduce social spending (at least in ratio to the population). The end result is an increase in individual human suffering and social exclusion.

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About the Author

Peter Gibilisco was diagnosed with the progressive neurological condition called Friedreich's Ataxia, at age 14. The disability has made his life painful and challenging. He rocks the boat substantially in the formation of needed attributes to succeed in life. For example, he successfully completed a PhD at the University of Melbourne, this was achieved late into the disability's progression. However, he still performs research with the university, as an honorary fellow. Please read about his new book The Politics of Disability.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Peter Gibilisco
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