Rent and the commodification of disability support services

Let me be very provocative here: the major political parties tell us that their new Federal-State relations have brought about new and allegedly efficient economies to social welfare and health. OK. It is from our taxes that our political parties have been paid for running election campaigns. Large amounts go to the political parties to prevent them from going bankrupt. So where is the public education material that has explained clearly and simply why these new latter-day stringencies have come about for disability support services? Why is there such widespread anxiety among those concerned about the rejigging of costs from the Federal to the State level? If there is no extra impost upon those who can least afford it, and financial obligations have merely been balanced in a new way, why has it not been explained clearly and unequivocally?

One probable answer is that the political parties have not actually been willing to engage in such positive political education. They've been too busy simply trying to tweak support by a politics of negation. Maybe then, public funding for elections should be cancelled until these privileged parties can actually show that they are able to engage in political education in a just and fair.

Let me go further here: my progressive illness creates a deterioration of motor skills, leaving all my physical attributes severely disabled. However, I am still able to perform research and write pieces like this presentation to this forum. Basically my performance is made possible through the synergy gained mainly through my work with my support worker and a long-term academic associate.

Let me explain why I am taking the opportunity of emphasizing this concept of synergy in this article. Even if I wanted to, I cannot wave my arms around and bang my fist on the table about public policy. They say the pen is mightier than the sword, and for me there is a synergy with various people who help me get my views across which is crucial for me and I dare to say for people with such different abilities and their support workers. It is about life chances and the creation of opportunities. Therefore, the essence of synergy is to value difference in order to stimulate living options.

Now I perceive that the service provider, has a real problem - there is a trend in the disability carer workforce is towards casualisation. My complaint is simple; it is also a fear. This tendency in the workforce undermines the ethos of the place where I live. I find myself alarmed by the reduction in the friendships I have formed with my support workers. Casualisation frightens me because it requires constraints upon the synergies I need to keep going, at a time in my life when my energy is reduced. Perhaps further discussion can pinpoint ways in which casualisation changes the ethos of our living place, our homes.

But can I plead with the service providers management to resist the casualisation of our work-force? Basic friendships between us and support workers take time to develop. I need to teach my carers how to care properly for me as my body slows down. I just do not have energy to mount yet another re-education of a new support worker. Please. I am asking for sustained corporate consideration of the importance of ensuring work conditions that carers can happily stay on caring for us residents. Continuity is so crucial to the ethos of the place.

But I perceive a problem here and it becomes a political problem. The casualization of the work-force now coincides with the compulsory competitive tendering that DHHS requires before a contract to run a facility is granted. And the fear I have is that the increase in rent that I am required to pay coincides with a world-view in which the residents of disability support service facilities like my own are treated too much like commodities for trade when the auctioning season for contract renewal arrives. I know this sounds extreme; but this tendency is confirmed when the need to nurture genuine lasting friendships between residents and carers is misunderstood. The unpriceable nature of friendship is not that it is worth out worth; but its worth actually transcends the fair dollar value of the service.

And that misunderstanding at the level of management hollows out the ethos of service delivery because it lacks attributes necessary for sustained caring of us residents. But there is an "altruistic" outcome in the social service delivery of which I am the beneficiary. It happens at the workplace which is "my place", the location of such synergy. It generates friendship - workers and clients become "mates". This workplace is where we actively welcome the visitors into our home. "My place" is sustained by friendships that generated there.

In other words I am suggesting that the relationship between a support worker and a client is what this is all about. This is also an industrial issue. We cannot deny the relationship factor involved in caring for people with disabilities. The management of facilities providing services must come to acknowledge this if people with disabilities are to gain their full potential and respect in society; just policies are needed to ensure that carers will stay around as an important part of our life! And it seems, sadly, that such an insight is foreign to the political horizon of our major parties and the governments they form.

Am I suggesting that the organisation running the facility where I live should become more political? Yes I am. But I am suggesting that they need to do that by emphasizing policies that will embody justice and fairness. That is the way service providers can make a positive contribution not just to the life of its residents and its workers but to our wider society and our responsibility for each other. Thank you.