Unpublished letter to Sydney Morning Herald

Once again dear readers, the uncritical internet allows the unpublished to be published!

Here is Jenny's letter published in the Sydney Morning Herald today:

Seems they don't care, at all

Mr Costello, thank you very much for the carer's bonus from this year's budget. It will offset the carer's allowance of less than $50 a week nicely. I might go silly and buy a ticket on a cruise. I need a holiday. Being constantly responsible for another person's every need is exhausting work. What? $600? Oh, well. Maybe a few trips on the Manly ferry, then. Was there any news about federal funding of supported accommodation for people with disabilities? No? Just more for aged care. That's reassuring. I'll be able to get a place when I can no longer care for myself. I wonder what will happen to my intellectually disabled son then?

Jenny Rollo, Putney

And here is my reply:

Dear Editor

Ageing parent/carers like Jenny Rollo (letters 10/5/07) keenly feel the lack of a timely and humane transition into supported accommodation for their adult sons and daughters. Yet this problem can be solved in the same way as aged-care accommodation was solved. Population benchmarking. In line with the aged-care population benchmark formula (108 places/packages per 1000 over the age of 70), population benchmarking of 18 places/packages of supported accommodation per 1000 people with disability in the severe to profound range is a cost-effective solution and compares favourably with aged care accommodation spending.

It would provide certainty and peace of mind to parents/carers who cannot physically continue to provide round-the-clock care for their family member with dependent disability. It would also immediately ease the critical shortage of respite beds often unavailable because of the deaths of elderly caring parents. There is a solution but who of our leaders has the political will to apply the solution?

There you have it.

Carers Alliance - Federal Party Membership Form

The Carers Alliance urgently needs 650 members to contest the Federal election in October 2007. If you would like to support our cause, please download a membership form and mail the completed form to:

Nell Brown
107 Balmoral St
HORNSBY NSW 2077

Carers Alliance - A New Political Party

On the 3rd of April, 2007 the Carers Alliance was registered as an incorporated Association in NSW with the express purpose of forming a political party. The mission of this new political party is to fill the void which exists in the political landscape and provide a political expression of the frustration and anger of carers of people with disability, mental and chronic illness and problems associated with frail-age.

Help us gain political traction to influence government to give carers a better deal. It is services and support that carers need not tokenism.

I am convinced that politicians and their bureaucrats never do anything out of altruism or because they care. They only act when it is politically expedient to do so. We want to make the issues that affect carers a political problem that precipitates political action to solve it.

Published at last

I was invited by ABC Opinion Online to submit an essay which was published on 20 April, 2007. Frustration vented.

letter in SMH 10-5-07 by parent Jane Salmon

This letter about the lack of provision for families of and children with disabilities

Dear Editor

A federal budget coming down just before Autism Awareness Week will naturally be bristling with educational, medical, carer and therapeutic learning benefits for every family affected. Well, no. Hello? Mr Costello? Mr Abbott? Ms Bishop? Mr Costello? The Howard Government could teach autism, given its auditory and visual receptivity problems.

Jane Salmon Lindfield