Opening address at Inclusive Directions “Disability Matters” conference, 19.9.2015
19/09/2015
Thanks for inviting me along today. I’m Kelly Vincent, Dignity for Disability’s member of the Legislative Council. Before I begin, I would like to tell you a little of my journey of advocacy and something about my party and my work in parliament. I will then lead on with a few thoughts about the barriers to inclusion for children with disabilities, and I hope this gets you thinking about what you and your organisation can do to improve the lives of children with disabilities, and how we can all create the inclusive future we want.
Dignity for Disability is a small, South Australian based political party and I am the sole elected representative so far. We hold regular fundraisers to support our election campaigns, and I am up for re-election in 2018.
Since I was elected to Parliament in 2010, I have been inundated by constituents seeking advocacy on every issue you can imagine – mostly relating to disability in some way. I should point out that my work covers the full gamut of portfolio areas, and that as an upper house MP I represent the whole of South Australia. It is a huge workload, managing my parliamentary commitments, constituent matters, invitations to events and also trying to keep an eye on the horizon for the policy development we need to create ongoing positive change.
Although politics wasn’t the career I had planned, landing in Parliament House at the age of 21 has been an amazing opportunity – for me – and I think and hope for furthering the broader awareness of disability. I feel honoured and privileged to continue my work towards improving the lives of South Australians with disabilities.
As I mentioned, because I am a member of the legislative council I represent all South Australians, I regularly get calls from people requiring advocacy on issues, advice around legislation or policy, or other broader systemic matters surrounding disability. These could include viewing matters through a disability lens in health, transport, housing, the justice system, education, disability services – and, well, pretty much anything else you can think of!
Advocacy – and my wheelchair – are inescapable parts of my identity. My wheelchair gives me the freedom to be mobile – but it also happens to be an essential part of the story of how I became Australia’s youngest female M.P.
Unbeknown to me at the time, my political journey began when I started a campaign of advocating for a new wheelchair. I was 20 years old and was still using the same wheelchair I’d had since I was 10! And I don’t know about you, but I certainly grew between when I was 10 and 20 years of age – and my wheelchair was way too small and it was causing me problems because of this.
Although Disability SA were fully aware of my need for a new chair, nothing was happening. I just got fed up. I was constantly having to monitor with Disability Services when I might finally get my adult wheelchair. So, I set up a campaign on Facebook and all of a sudden people from all over Australia and the world were interested – including David Bevan and Matthew Abraham from ABC radio, and I soon became a bit of a regular on their program – telling their listeners the latest update in my wait for my wheelchair.
So, in a very real sense for me, the personal is political. Because it is action that takes us beyond our words, beliefs and thoughts to lead us to become that more respectful, fair, just and equal society we want South Australia to be. And it was through this wheelchair campaign – where I was not only advocating for my own rights but also for the rights of my peers – that I was approached by Dignity for Disability to stand as a candidate in the 2010 election. In unexpected circumstances I was elected, so becoming something of an “accidental politician”.
I’ve seen some great changes for the disability sector in the five years since I arrived in Parliament. I have been proud to play a pivotal role in creating South Australia’s Disability Justice Plan as a way of giving a voice to people who were voiceless in the court system.
Legislation that for the Disability Justice Plan has been endorsed by the South Australian Parliament. We hope it will help transform the experience of people with disabilities – and it is an example of what policy and law reform needs to look like if we are to create a paradigm shift in thinking and prevent violence against people with disabilities.
I have also recently established a select committee that is looking into the experience of students with disabilities in our education system. The need for such a committee is clear from my dealings with many families who are struggling to have their child’s right to an education met.
Parents have contacted me in dismay over situations where, for instance, they are telephoned by their child’s school on a daily basis and asked to come and collect their child from school due to the child’s behaviour. The child’s behaviour could be a normal, everyday part of their disability and may reasonably be expected at times to be arguably disruptive, yet the effect of this is that because the school cannot cope, the parents cannot work.
I have heard from parents who have been told by school principals that their child cannot attend school full-time due to a lack of support resourcing in that school. This is flatly unacceptable from a human rights and an educational development perspective.
And, talking about the effect of parents being asked to come and collect their children from school, according to a 2011 Productivity Commission report, the workforce participation rate of primary carers of people with disabilities stands at just 54 per cent compared to 80 per cent of people with no family-caring responsibilities.
The economic ramifications of family carers being pulled out of the workforce in this way to support their child when the education system cannot presents an unacceptable cost to families and the economy, as well as a human rights concern. So it is experiences such as these that have led to the establishment of a committee to inquire into the situation in our education system.
My experience in politics has been that most of the time if you can put your case to the right person you can effect some change. Now that’s not to say it’s all beer and skittles down at Parliament House, because it is not, but I think that on the whole, my dealings with Ministers have brought positive results for the public.
So in some ways, the human rights of people with disability as equals alongside our non-disabled peers in the community are slowly being recognised.
But we still have such a long way to go.
Even now, people still ring up talkback radio and ask: “Why should I have to pay for someone else’s kid’s wheelchair?”
What they fail to recognise is that tomorrow they themselves or their own child could so easily become members of the “disability club” perhaps becoming dependent on others for their showers and personal care for the rest of their life. That’s the reality of it, and of course it makes me angry that such attitudes still exist.
Parents and families are still in crisis trying to support their children whose complex support needs are not adequately funded. We are seeing benefits from the NDIS, but there are “turf wars” over funding during the roll out, and I see children as the losers in an adult bureaucratic game over which they have no control. Because we understand the enormous social and economic value of early investment, it is really nothing short of criminal that children are being left in limbo between systems, for instance in the provision of speech pathology services, during the roll out.
I want to see a community that can more than cope with differences – I want our system to offer the type of positive and re-assuring attitudinal support that makes parents feel valued for the role they play. I don’t want parents to feel that they can’t get the understanding they need when they are involved in accessing services, and I want children with disabilities to be seen for their abilities and potential, just as every child should be.
In a recent visit to an Adelaide school, I was shocked when, in front of students, a teacher explained to me that all the students there were “non-verbal” and “incontinent”. I cannot accept that anyone would think such a breach of privacy is ok.
It is so important that young children have champions, within their close circle – their family, within their broader circle – their early learning centres and within the policy circle of government. We need the champions at the highest level to understand the importance of early childhood education.
I’ve got some statistics to present now, and I am demonstrating my skills as a rule-breaker here, because I have heard it said that one must never, ever put statistics into speeches, but I’m breaking the rules – and I think you’ll see why.
These statistics come from the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, and they are:
Seven hundred,
eighteen,
ninety to one hundred,
three to one and
four to nine. (700, 18, 90 – 100, 3:1 and 4 – 9).
Did I hear someone up the back say ‘Bingo’? I guess that because you are all practitioners in the early childhood field some of those numbers may immediately mean something to you, but I will expand.
700 is the number of new neural connections per second that are created in the first few years of life. Such connections are especially formed through ‘serve and return’ interactions with adults, and it is these connections that build the foundation upon which all future learning, behaviour and development depend.
18 months is the age at which disparities in vocabulary begin to appear, depending on whether children have been exposed to a language rich environment. By age 3, children who have been in a language-rich environment can be expected to have a vocabulary 2-3 times larger than their peers.
90 – 100 percent is the chance of developmental delays when children experience 6 – 7 compounding risk factors such as poverty, caregiver mental health issues, and abuse. Children whose mothers have a low education level can have delays in cognitive, language or emotional development.
3 to 1 are the odds of adult heart disease after 7 – 8 adverse childhood experiences, because these early experiences actually get into the body, with a lifelong effect on physical as well as cognitive and emotional development. There are links to an increased risk of diabetes, hypertension, stroke and obesity.
Child abuse and child trauma are not problems that stay in childhood.
$4 – $9 is a figure that refers to the return for every dollar invested in early childhood programs. Economists have shown that high quality early childhood programs bring impressive returns on investment to the public purse. Not only do the children earn higher incomes as adults, there is a saving in reduced education, welfare and crime costs. This is real win-win stuff.
Further long term follow up studies in the US have indicated figures as high as a $17 saving for every dollar invested.
Clearly, in discussing early childhood, we are not talking simply about the joy of introducing young children to sand, to play dough, to paint and to books. We are working here with the very building blocks of our entire society, our entire community, and whether that is a toxic, dysfunctional and unhealthy society, or one made up of resilient, positive people with their sense of self and of safety in tact who will be able to contribute for their lifetime to the community in which they live.
Of course you know that you are not dealing with small stuff here, and yet the early childhood sector remains undervalued, staff remain underpaid and the work of improving the holistic service provision necessary to underpin good early childhood education is still a work in progress.
The delivery of effective parent education programs, in particular, offers the means to increase the number of people in a child’s life who are maximising quality early interactions. Attending parenting courses should be encouraged and supported with all the resources necessary to develop the home and early childhood centre partnership to support children.
I would like to turn to some comments about the importance of music. This study focuses on music but I believe these benefits are true of all art forms.
We know that music is pleasant and enjoyable, but is it another key to boost the life-long effect of quality early childhood education?
A recent report by South Australian Thinker in Residence, Martin Elbourne on the future of live music in South Australia has, as one of its recommendations, that we implement to its fullest, the proposed new national curriculum for the Arts in SA to ‘maximise opportunities for creative musical expression in children’.
Elbourne cited research that suggests ‘music is a biological predisposition in human beings, and that it is an integral part of a child’s development’.
There is a strong suggestion in the research that we are all hardwired for musical experience and as such we all have the innate ability to respond to music and to develop musically. The fostering of musical ability and responses to music in young children is important to all-round function and growth.
The Thinker in Residence concluded from this that it is ‘important that policy makers, and in particular those who develop early childhood education curricula, consider music as an integral part of the development of young people when developing and implementing such policy.’
So it’s important to include music in the early childhood daily curriculum, not just as a tacked-on after-thought, but as another form of literacy children can be immersed in.
In my work as a parliamentarian, I am contacted by people in crisis every day. People with disabilities spend a disproportionate chunk of their lives battling bureaucracy just to gain fair access to the world.
My primary goal as an MP is to make myself redundant…and this goal will be reached when having a disability in South Australia no longer constitutes a full-time job.
In every sense, I exist in my current position as a member of parliament to ensure that we get the paradigm shift both within government and the broader community that results in a deep understanding of what it does – and does not – mean to live with a disability. It is about changing society by breaking down those attitudinal barriers.
It seems to me that even with the best will in the world, far too many people involved – and that includes people within the health, education and disability sectors – do not respect the rights of people with disabilities.
The personal is political, I think there are three keys to improving our society: “fairness, innovation, and respect”.
Fairness – because we all deserve a fair go.
Innovation – because we need to find the synergy of creative solutions, challenge our own thinking
and respect – because it doesn’t matter whether or not you can help someone, showing them respect means we can all hold our heads high.
In conclusion:
The personal is political, and it is only our action that will move us beyond our words, beliefs and thoughts to see us to become that more respectful, fair, just and equal society we all want South Australia to be. The work that you do with young children in the early years is the biggest investment we can ever make, I honour and applaud the work that you do and wish you well with this timely and important series of conferences.
