http://www.blisstree.com/articles/jonathan-eady-deserves-better/ Family, Health, Home and Lifestyles Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:20:15 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 http://www.blisstree.com/articles/jonathan-eady-deserves-better/comment-page-1/#comment-550038 stela Mon, 23 Jun 2008 02:25:34 +0000 http://www.autismvox.com/jonathan-eady-deserves-better/#comment-550038 This is a sad story. I hope that others in a similar situation will have their stories heard, as I'm sure Johnathon is not the only person falling between the huge gap in services offered by the New Zealand government for people with special needs. My son is 15 years old and was diagnosed with asd as well as having physical and intellectual disabilities. I'm sure when people see him they only see the last two and assume he doesn't understand much (he communicates non-verbally) when in fact it is the asd that causes him the most difficulties, and he understands everything, or tries to. He stays a couple of nights a week at a place funded by the NZ government for people with intellectual disabilities, and the other kids he stays with are all on the autistic spectrum. The care giving industry in NZ has long been underpaid, a sad hangover from the mentality that it's women's work and therefore not that important. So the staff are (usually) doing their best but are often ill equiped to relate to complex behaviours and resort to a "stop that, it's naughty" reaction without fully understanding. It's the old institutional idea that if they are clean and fed you are doing your job. In saying that, the place my son visits is really trying to get stimulating activities happening for the teenagers and is attempting to come to grips with his communication needs, and the staff were recently awarded a pay increase. But there is still a long way to go, and there are far more residential environments not trying so hard. Basically as far as I'm aware there is no specialist residential place to live in NZ if you need full time care and you are autistic. You get drafted into intellectually disabled places or as in the case of Johnathon, treated as a violent psych patient. It would be interesting to read the letters to the Editor pages of the following few NZ Herald papers (I tried on the site, but no luck) as I'm sure autistic advocates would have some valuable comments. It's good to get the dialogue going, although that doesn't help Johnathon immediately. This is a sad story. I hope that others in a similar situation will have their stories heard, as I’m sure Johnathon is not the only person falling between the huge gap in services offered by the New Zealand government for people with special needs.
My son is 15 years old and was diagnosed with asd as well as having physical and intellectual disabilities. I’m sure when people see him they only see the last two and assume he doesn’t understand much (he communicates non-verbally) when in fact it is the asd that causes him the most difficulties, and he understands everything, or tries to. He stays a couple of nights a week at a place funded by the NZ government for people with intellectual disabilities, and the other kids he stays with are all on the autistic spectrum. The care giving industry in NZ has long been underpaid, a sad hangover from the mentality that it’s women’s work and therefore not that important. So the staff are (usually) doing their best but are often ill equiped to relate to complex behaviours and resort to a “stop that, it’s naughty” reaction without fully understanding. It’s the old institutional idea that if they are clean and fed you are doing your job. In saying that, the place my son visits is really trying to get stimulating activities happening for the teenagers and is attempting to come to grips with his communication needs, and the staff were recently awarded a pay increase. But there is still a long way to go, and there are far more residential environments not trying so hard.
Basically as far as I’m aware there is no specialist residential place to live in NZ if you need full time care and you are autistic. You get drafted into intellectually disabled places or as in the case of Johnathon, treated as a violent psych patient. It would be interesting to read the letters to the Editor pages of the following few NZ Herald papers (I tried on the site, but no luck) as I’m sure autistic advocates would have some valuable comments. It’s good to get the dialogue going, although that doesn’t help Johnathon immediately.

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