The loss at st Lucys of a young boy and the strain on parents of children with disabilities …
Watching over our children – mothers know the urgency and necessary vigilance, to protect their vulnerable child from harm. Yet still others like teachers and carers and disability providers do not have the same heightened vigilance. This is too sad another tragedy, and these tragedies happen too much to special needs kids. Now on hearing about this dear boy, a young 10 year old……dying at St Lucys special needs school, he became trapped under a lift the details we do not know except that it occurred in an older school building and the poor boy was crushed under it– how could it possibly happen? https://www.news.com.au/.../9c58b21e124021585235d0023a0deaa1
One thing we do know is from the news article (Daily mirror 3rd November 2023 article by Tito Smith) the young special needs boy, Sanad, was believed to have been fixated with lifts. However, that does not show how he got trapped which is a tragedy as you usually cannot get under a lift unless there is something wrong with the lift in that case there could be a negligence case on the school.
Noting now just in from the article from the Daily Mirror Australia (3 November 2023)
“Police are investigating whether the lift, which was situated on the ground floor of the school's Veritas Building, was faulty. The school was reportedly raising money to upgrade the Veritas building - a 1970s structure - with new facilities. St Lucy's has declined to comment.
Detectives are examining whether the lift may have malfunctioned - allowing the doors to open before the elevator was ready to operate.
The precise circumstances of how the incident occurred aren't clear, with investigators hoping CCTV will show what happened. “
Health and safety rules need to be strongly kept and adhered to, around disability kids. Health and safety rules must be upheld because we cannot afford any mistakes as they can become fatal around these children do not understand danger. If there were cctv cameras we might even know what actually happened and when so the investigators here are looking to the cctv. Too late now.
As all parents know of special needs children you have to get extra vigilant and you cannot let them out of your sight or it may be a terrible accident, even fatal, so there must be extreme supervision of special needs kids - as they can be obsessed with many things.
My son loves things that spin fans on ceiling he gazed at from a young baby, dryers and laundromats he loves and used to spin pot lids on the floors as a toddler, even coins in his little fingers on the high chair. No one has so far worked out why special kids or autistic or fragile x like James, love to see things spin. So much to research needed. Unless we find out why we cannot really try to help that part of the brain and my son is also fixated with switches and buttons which is ok but now where the oven is concerned. We constantly cellotape the switches, so that he cannot turn the oven on and burn himself. We have to watch him all the time. When he goes to respite house I send multiple instructions underlined, and with bold print about the switches and about the car doors and windows need to be locked and using kiddilock (not a restrictive practise but a protection for a kids who would open them if he could even when the car is on the highway). So much health and safety is needed for vulnerable children and adults whose lives are at stake if they are not protected, watched , cared for properly and valued. Only mothers of special needs kids know what it is like to try to keep their special needs kid safe from harm and alive in a world of dangers. Those dangers need to be assessed all the time.
That’s why we still need special classrooms with properly trained teachers who understand the complexity of these children and youth and what they need. Not mainstream teachers who do not know anything and you need a lot of staff to man these classrooms. To put severely affected special needs children in with mainstream kids will not be any good for them or the mainstream kids – there needs to be specialisation for those with high needs it is not about segregation at all. Those kids who are only mildly affected by a disorder or autism may be ok in a mainstream classroom, the others are not and will be disadvantaged. The Royal Commission was split on this recommendation to – get rid of all special needs classrooms and schools they demand stop segregation – three of them, do they know what they are talking about – do they have nonverbal or high needs children to look after? How arrogant to make these claims while knowing little of disability children and youth themselves. The other two commissioners did not agree. The idea is too simplistic.
We need special needs schools despite this tragedy at St Lucys there would be more than this one tragedy if mainstream classrooms stuck all special needs kids in mainstream classrooms. In fact, its possible some schools would reject disability kids coming into their schools in case they lost the main stream kids, or parents would just take their ‘normal’ children out as their needs would be possibly ignored in the furore to appear to give disability kids their equal rights.
Most of the time the government is trying to stop spending money and yet will dish out to sports and casinos and private schools. I doubt they will care what happens to special needs kids should schools turn their backs on them because they cannot handle both ‘normal’ and special kids mixed together. How could a mainstream teacher handle both anyway? The workload alone of looking after a disability child is fulltime and exhausting. What a joke.
While parents of special needs children are keeping such vigilance to stop their children being hurt or fatally killed by all the dangers of the world and lack of supervision in schools, day programs and respite houses, where much abuse and accidents still occur, the NDIS has been shown as trying to wear parents down by dragging out court cases with them when they fight for their child’s funding back that has been cut off them and using expensive lawyers for things that are made up and excuses not to pay parents what they need for their children. (Saturday paper Rick Morton 3 November 2023)
“A leaked review document shows the National Disability Insurance Agency used ‘legalistic brinkmanship’ to force disabled people to ‘bargain away their rights’. ( Rick Morton, The Australian 2023 November 3rd)
A backlog of thousands of National Disability Insurance Scheme tribunal appeals was almost entirely artificial, not based on proper legislative interpretation and driven instead by “external pressures” to rein in costs of the scheme, according to independent reviewers chosen to work through the stricken cases.” Rick Morton – (the Australian 3 November 2023)
Parents are already living on the edge trying to look after their special children and yet the NDIS which is supposed to be helping them instead takes them to court to drag out with false arguments why parents cannot get funding for that child or young person, or their adult child. Hoping they will wear parents down! Where is the compassion toward those who are living an extremely hard life trying to care for their needy child? NO the politicians want to wear them down. For shame the politicians should be held accountable for their gross lack of empathy and care aiming only for their money making and yet it is taxpayers money they reap for the providers who charge so much because of the NDIS generosity to them.
The politicians constantly complaining that the NDIS is blowing out in costs it is the NDIS that is setting the higher and higher rates that require the more and more funding. Yet the NDIS is the one that set s the rates higher and higher so that more funding is needed every 6 months – and funds have to be higher for parents to pay. Some bankers have told me it’s a rort. The greed of the governments and politicians that get up to hijinks at the expense of the innocent knows no end.
We parents need to keep fighting for our children’s needs, yes we even have to fight the NDIS who claim to be helping those in disabilities what a contradiction! Yes in all areas of special needs including schools and get the necessary funding from the NDIS, we need to stand together, and help each other – no one survives on their own we need to reach out as things worsen in this area of disabilities. Our children have rights and the government’s responsibility is to make sure that those with disabilities are looked after and given a chance of a thriving life – the Australian government signed the United Nations human rights and disabilities charter now they must do the right thing and we parents must hold them to it.
The NDIS needs to be held accountable for what it has done against parents. The justice system needs to be held to account for its lack of justice for those who have died in disabilities through negligence with no criminal charges ever laid against the workers. Of course with no CCTV there is no evidence and injustice continues. “oh the floodgates of litigations’ may open – please courts get over yourselves while the rich get richer you are denying the needy and disability people even very basic justice for assaults and abuse they should not have to go through and have no defence against. Their blood then is on the heads of the courts as well as the providers who get away with it. For instance, Afford disabilities slapped on the wrist with a 400,000 dollar fine for a girl who died in their care while the workers watched TV instead of watching her in the bath. Why was no one punished? Like a corporation they can cover up and get away with it all.
Any parents who hurt their kids would be find or imprisoned why are carers allowed to do this to our children in disability programs and houses? It is crass injustice. Why do they let it happen just for the money? Yes and yes again. We must continue to fight for our children and for each other to see that disabilities vulnerable children and adults are protected properly by Health and Safety laws and that those places where our children go abide by health and safety laws or they should be reported to Worksafe, to police and to the fraud departments when providers take our children’s funds illegally. Parents in the end have to step up or more innocent ones will die through mishaps, lack of supervision and lack of proper safety measures being carried out in all disabilities areas of care and schooling. The NDIA quality commission does little about the providers and others who will not comply with safety laws of the land, merely ‘retraining’ or doing nothing, the guilty perpetrators and organizations need to be reported to the government departments of health and safety and to the law.
The job is not being done properly of protecting those with disabilities we need to change this and make those in disabilities accountable especially the providers taking all the funding but refusing to report or be accountable for any harm done to our children. Sign my petition for CCTV cameras to be made compulsory in disabilities respite houses, day programs and schools. change.org/disabilitycameras
We must protect our children realizing that no one else will do it for us.
All the best
Anndrea x
#disabilitylivesmatteroz