‘Welfare services failing"

Press, 31 October 1977, Page 6

‘Welfare services failing"

If New Zealand’s disabled are to be given the chance of living as citizens of a normal community, welfare services need more enlightened thinking than the present “bricks and mortar” attitudes, according to Mr J. B. Munro in Christchurch on Saturday. Mr Munro, a former member of Parliament for Invercargill, introduced the Disabled Persons’ Community Welfare Bill as a private member’s bill before its acceptance by the then Labour Government in 1975. Speaking after the seminar on Saturday, he said that New Zealand was slowly changing its attitudes towards its disabled. “A country consists of people who are different, and it is normal to be different, and so disabled people who may differ from that mythical ‘norm’ must be part of the

ordinary community.” he said. What was needed to avoid a continuation of the “bricks and mortar” attitude of welfare agencies was to encourage new ways to integrate even the most severely disabled in the community. “Part of the problem is our archaic hospital board system, which because of historical growth still thinks in terms of ‘beds’ and ‘patients’,” he said. “In fairness, support groups do exist for the disabled, but it is a matter of ‘who pays the piper calls the tune’." Mr Munro said that the advisory council set up to assist the Minister of Social Welfare (Mr Walker) in the implementation of the Disabled Persons’ Community Welfare Act was not monitoring the needs of the disabled as the legislators had intended. “The spirit of the act is.

not being carried out as effectively as it could be. and perhaps the council is not as heavily loaded with disabled people as it should be.” The advisory’ council needed to be outside departmental and Ministerial thinking so that it might trulv be innovative, he said. “It needs more vigour. Perhaps this might be achieved by having ‘feed-back’ people in every community.” At present it was not living up to the hopes of the disabled. The community needed to realise that the disabled were not looking for handouts, or for charity, but for concerned support to help them help themselves. “If they are not getting the real chances to be normal citizens, then it is high time they started ‘stirring’ responsibly,” said Mr Munro.