The fears of parents who use childcare are the same fears parents of disabilities children face for all their child's life.
The Barbie the movie is riding high making it’s first billion dollars. The media loves it and the money making that’s all they talk about. At the same time introducing the Downs Syndrome Barbie to make Barbie inclusive. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65388131
Sure thing. Capitalism knows no bounds but in the middle of that they often forget about human factor. The big corporations like Mattel are all about the money but if human rights are popular they will go with it as long as it sells the dolls.
Meanwhile, the reality of what little girls have faced in the real world now continues and the fear of parents for their vulnerable children in childcare is also riding high since the recent charging of a childcare worker for multiple numbers of abuse. That overwhelming fear however has been with parents of nonverbal disability kids for a long time now and starts when realize they can never defend themselves or speak up for themselves wherever they go. That others can take advantage of them. And the workers we trusted may also turn on our children and our children cannot protect themselves from them. As the support workers in two major providers in disabilities managed to hurt and bruise my son with no accountability by them or their employers it is covered up and whatever happens to your child is of no consequence. Or they get very nasty if you keep making them accountable in the end you have to get your child out.
We always worry what will happen to our children when they are in care as they cannot say what happens to them and there are no mandated cctv cameras to protect them from bad workers who may abuse physically, emotionally or sexually and get away with it as our most vulnerable are not protected from harm.
I remember when James was three years old and I was at a shopping mall food court with him in a pram as I turned to buy food for him he ran away in a split second – I search the mall for him and a lady who saw me in tears came to look for him with me.
What if someone took him I said to her I was so afraid, because he couldn’t speak he couldn’t ask for help he could tell anyone who he was and where his mother was - I was terrified he was gone and we notified over the loud speaker at the shops …then worker from the supermarket came up to me with James in her arms – he was in the biscuit section she said and was running away from us when we tried to get him to come with us and giggling. Thank you I said! The fear was awful and I would never forget that time. A few years later I was walking through the same mall and a lady came up to me – she said are you the mother who was crying because you lost your son? Yes I said it was definitely me. We smiled at each other I cant believe you remember me I said I was only in my early thirties then and lived in fear for my son’s future at being so vulnerable after three ‘normal’ children having one with special needs was a whole other world.
Looking back, there would have been cameras in that shopping centre which never crossed my mind at that time but would have assisted if James had been taken or harmed. The CCTV is everywhere but yet not in disabilities even though providers are allowed to have them, most do not use them. They do not want the trouble or the accountability that would come from having them. They use privacy as an excuse for not having CCTV cameras, but in reality not wanting their workers to be caught hurting our children or neglecting them. CCTV cameras are for protection they need to be also taken up by disabilities providers as part of protection of our children who are so vulnerable. Childcare workers at least have to do two years Uni or Tafe. Disability workers don’t have to do anything. Their disability course may be for a few months. This disabilities training and education should be lifted and should also be mandated for better standards of workers who are actually interested in disabilities care and who could go further with disabilities if they were educated in it further.
Unfortunately, there are not precautions taken by the NDIS and the disability providers are allowed to put our children at risk by not having CCTV cameras and not being regulated properly and in person by the NDIS. Instead disabilities is viewed as a business. Much like childcare. You would think that those in disabilities would be protected and kept safe and the risk of harm minimised but instead it is ignored. No health and safety to protect our children. Yet disabilities is such big business but the are is negated while the money is focused on by the providers and their provider the NDIS which keeps lifting the price rates every year of all services. It is not just the providers putting the rates up it is the NDIS I noticed a lift of three hundred dollars a night over two years came from the NDIS rates which the providers automatically take up and who pays the providers? The NDIS with taxpayers money. So all this talk of stop rorting is great but the NDIS needs to also stop lifting the rates for the providers to get rich. There is a double game going on here.
Even though Barbie movie has hit its billion dollar goal already in our capitalist society and all kudos to Robbie and Gerwig for their cute and touching movie that makes girls think twice before becoming someone’s decoration or less than the great person they could be - and the kids all buying more Barbie dolls is great for Mattel who must love this all (Will Ferrell notwithstanding with his ignorant arrogant silly character as the CEO hope that’s not real).
Our capitalist society though so bent on making money out of things that will please children and teens and those who used to own such doll objects as Barbie - has missed that while we push parents to make money to give their children all that money can buy - children have been left in childcare centres for that convenience, to pay off the house and bills so that parents can work more and more, but are parents are not making enough connection to even notice their kids have been harmed there. Surely something has to give?
It seems strange that not one parent or childcare centre noticed the 336 rapes of young children – girls included in the 1000 plus abuse charges this childcare worker achieved for himself – filming and photographing the abuse and rapes he did. Using his mobile phone and camera which ultimately caught him out or he would still be doing it to children.
Did the parents not see any of the physical damage to their small children as well as the withdrawn or anger kinds of behavioural effects from being traumatised the children would have displayed? Or did they put it down to a bad day or ‘accident’. Alternatively, as happens in disabilities care, did parents go to the childcare centres and ask what had happened and nobody knew at the childcare centres or pretended not to know? Did it get covered up by the ten childcare centres in Queensland and the one in Sydney. Once again, no accountability for what they do or omit to do as an organisations that are there to make money out of our children and parents needs but then fail to actually protect them while they bring in their profits.
A doll, Barbie is no comfort to these little girls who are now young adults – Barbie in the movie did not feel safe in the real world and with good reason. She has the body of a woman, and these kids were subjected to abuse an adult woman would be traumatised by. How sad and so awful it will take a lot of therapy love and support to get them through and their parents now. Yes sue the childcare centres at least the perpetrator gave camera evidence while those vulnerable children and adult children in disabilities who are being abused are never given any justice without the evidence of cctv cameras as the courts will not listen and do not want to deal with the 8000 incidents of serious harm that occurred in one year in disabilities with no prosecutions – and so the injustice continues.
Now a recent article by 7NEWS (3 August 2023) notes that a few parents will be taking the childcare centres to court to sue, but they have to prove there was breach of duty of care for a civil case. You think? I would imagine even a criminal case is possible because of the rapes and abuse.
https://7news.com.au/.../parents-of-some-children
However, they have to prove that the childcare centres also did wrong -because as the police even noted how could all these cases over 15 years happen with nobody noticing? He was a qualified childcare worker. The only reason this man was caught was because he made camera images himself of abusing the little girls and put it on the dark web. The childcare system then needs to be investigated because this person has been able to do these things undetected. Are there CCTV cameras at the childcare centres? It’s the same as disabilities in this system there are no CCTV cameras mandated and the children are even more vulnerable and cannot talk about what happened to them - our vulnerable disability children and adult children who are nonverbal will never be heard, or helped by the justice system because without CCTV cameras there is no proof to expose the crimes done against them by their carers, support workers or teachers or childcare workers.
While Mattel brings out this Barbie and that Barbie including the new Downs Syndrome Barbie we are living in a world where human rights are not being upheld for those in disabilities especially the most vulnerable. A little downs syndrome girl in the UK was protesting at downs syndrome babies being allowed to be aborted up to full term – an inhumane practice. She wanted to stop this happening but the legal system there would not listen.
Mattel says they are making Barbie inclusive but in the real world the justice system is not making those with disabilities included in getting justice or protection or investigations when crimes happen. The cctv cameras are necessary to catch the crime, to deter crimes and to give proof in court or precedents not set to be able to make successful claims in court for our children to ever get proper justice and the criminals that lurk in care to be charged and punished.
Pass this on to others and sign my petition for CCTV in disabilities:  change.org/disabilitycameras
All the best
Anndrea x
#saidstopabuseindisabilities
#cctvcameras4disabilities
#disabilitylivesmatteroz