Politics, funding and policy
- 12 Aug 2011
If we consider that disability is a social construction being located in environmental barriers to active community participation, then it follows that disability is a breach of our right to full community participation (a fundamental human right according to the UN Charter). Read more »
- 03 Nov 2010
The New Zealand Autism Spectrulm Disorder (ASD) Guidelines were published by the Ministry of Health in April 2008. This website was created to disseminate information in the guidelines on the recognition and referral of ASD. Read more »
- 18 May 2009
Tony Ryall, Minister of Heath, has recently culled the total number of performance targets for the nation's 21 DHBs from ten to six - and yet the emphasis is still on increasing inputs rather than achieving better health outcomes. Arguably, rehabilitation suffers when financial incentives are aligned with surgery rates rather than improvements in functional abilities and quality of life. Like it or not, rehabilitation providers are at the mercy of health funding structures - the more we know about them, the better. Read more »
- 14 Apr 2009
Since I came out as a gay man at 19 years old, I've been a user of home-based support, needs assessments, wheelchair assessments, physiotherapists as well as other health professionals and services, even rehabilitation at times. Every service provider, in my experience, has assumed I am heterosexual. Unless I actually say, ‘I'm a gay man', people assume I'm straight. That assumption operates at all levels of the organisation - from management, to administration, to individual staff. Read more »
- 27 Mar 2009
2009 is the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of his seminal book ‘Origin of Species’. The theory of evolution is one of the most important biological discoveries, period. However, evolution has also been mis-used to promote thoroughly bad ideas such as eugenics and social engineering. In the area of disability, the theory of evolution is tainted with these notions and terms such as ‘survival of fittest’ and ‘natural selection’ are quite offensive and gives the theory of evolution a bad name (which I think it might not deserve). There are two threads of thinking that I want to very briefly explore to show that the theory of evolution need not be seen as the ‘enemy’, and may actually be helpful in understanding human behaviour. Read more »
Early this year I reported on a submission I made with two colleagues to a ministerial taskforce on the development of the Primary Health Care workforce. The report from this taskforce is now in, and while interprofessional education (IPE) gets some coverage, there is still a lot of work to do in this area of clinical training in NZ. An upcoming workshop on IPE, to be held in Wellington in February 2009, is part of this ongoing work. Read more »
- 01 Oct 2008
In August I attended the APA Conference in Boston. This was my first trip to the US and I was excited to be travelling to that great mythical place to see it in reality. I was mostly excited about travelling to the home of the American With Disabilities Act; had the land of the free really become the land of access and inclusion? How would it compare to the land of the Human Rights Act where access and inclusion are tolerated so long as they are reasonable? Read more »
- 23 Aug 2008
The United Nations Convention of Rights of Persons with Disabilities came into force on 3 May 2008. Why is this convention so important and where are we at in meeting its objectives? Read more »
- 22 Aug 2008
One of the interesting topics at the recent Australian Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine annual meeting in Adelaide (May 2008) was a whole stream of papers about cancer survivorship and rehabilitation. Given that more and more people are surviving their initial cancer diagnosis, but with ongoing disability, is this an area in which rehabilitation services should developing? Read more »
- 22 Jun 2008
The safety of people admitted to New Zealand hospitals has featured prominently in the media this year. Dr Will Taylor debates the need to teaching and research into safety in hospitals for people with disabilities. Read more »
- 26 Oct 2007
The Ministry of Social Development and the Carers Alliance have been conducting community-based consultation on developing a national "Carer's Strategy". Keep up with the play on support for carers or contribute your own perspectives to the development of the strategy. Read more »
ACC has recently announced that it has launched a National Serious Injury Service that will specialise in working with people who have a permanent disability as a result of an injury. Read more »
Rehabilitation appears to have a low profile in the health sector, commanding less attention in the media than other speciality areas such as primary health or surgery. Perhaps it is time we started agitating for a larger slice of the pie? Read more »
Shakespeare wrote 'a rose by any other name would smell as sweet'. What about an institution by any other name? William Levack debates claims regarding the closure of the Kimberley Centre marking 'the end of institutionalisation in New Zealand'. Read more »
Philip Patston
