Solar

Please dont explode my child.

It worked out well. Until the owner of the organization saw a bunch of teenage kids being comfortable around me, and decided they needed to remind me that I was "just a volunteer" and should have been coming to them for everything despite them clearly GIVING me that responsibility.

Like what did they expect? That I would fuck up? That I would do something inappropriate?

When they tried to take the group out of my hands, I quit. And then they just tore the group apart.

Like.... these are the people who are SUPPOSED to be looking out for lgbtqia+ kids, and they got mad at me for doing too good of a job.

It was like they were mad that I WASN'T being a damn groomer; and that these kids were becoming healthier, and learning to rely on each other, and figure out their own problems, so they had to tear it apart.

I wish I could do something but being a part of an existing community was really the best way to go and there are no other organizations like that. And if I were to start one myself, I'm sure the allegations would be flying before I ever had my first meeting.

There are 760,000 Australians on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the system that - if they feel like it and your personalised plan says you get to have it - provides funding for everything from personal hygiene care to support workers to therapies to assistive technology. It's already very hard for disabled people to get on the NDIS, regardless of your disability. It's near impossible to access most support and equipment without being on the NDIS. And the government has announced that they want that number to drop to 600,000 in four years. 160,000 of us cut off the Scheme - and countless more denied access. This will cause deaths. People will die and people will suffer because there is no safety net. The NDIS is the only option for most of us. Even private health insurance doesn't cover most of these things. Nobody will swoop in to save us.

The bill wants to give the (non disabled!) NDIS minister basically unlimited power to cut our funding. They're already planning what they'd do with that power. What rights they'll strip from us. What dignity and freedom they'll remove to make their budget look better.

The bill wants to force people to try every treatment out there before they're allowed to be on the NDIS. Including if the treatment is literally impossible to access. There’s a lot of us living in regional areas or out bush who can't just pop to the capital cities for specialists. This will especially hurt disabled First Nations people in regional and remote communities, who already experience limited access to healthcare. Oh, and it includes chemical restraint, too. The government has directly refused to exclude chemical restraint from the required process, calling it "trialling medication".

If you're australian and worried, the ABC did a good breakdown of the proposed changes.

I know australia stuff doesn't really pop up on the radar on this site, but I want everyone to know what's going on. What we're fighting for here. Your australian disabled friends might be NDIS participants fearing for their life, rights, and freedom. They might not be a participant and afraid these changes mean they never will have access. We deserve better. The government built a system with no backup plan, and now they want hundreds of thousands of disabled people to pay the price for their bad planning.