#disabledpeople — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #disabledpeople, aggregated by home.social.
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Anyone Can Be Your NDIS Support Worker. Who Is Keeping You Safe?
Reflections from several years on the scheme.
I have been on the NDIS for several years. A recent re-hiring process clarified something I had long suspected. The scheme has a workforce problem, and participants are the ones bearing the brunt.
There Is No Mandatory Registration Requirement
Under current Australian law, participants who self-manage or plan-manage their NDIS funding can hire any person as a support worker. Independent support Workers require no registration or minimum training standards.
The worker who enters your home, learns your medical history, handles your medications, and has significant authority over your daily life may have no formal preparation for any of it.
The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission exists and handles serious complaints, including abuse, neglect, and criminal conduct. Boundary violations, confidentiality breaches, and chronic unpreparedness that fall below that threshold leave participants largely without recourse. Skilled and ethical workers bring those qualities from their own formation and prior training. When those qualities are absent, the participant discovers this after the fact, and any remedy is slow, uncertain, and theirs alone to pursue.
That is the baseline. Everything that follows is built on it.
The Dog
My service dog performs specific medical functions. His effectiveness depends on remaining focused and oriented to me.
Some workers reach for him the moment they walk through the door. They do not ask.
Touching a service animal without permission is a safety violation and, in some contexts, carries legal weight under Australian disability discrimination law. A worker entering the home of a participant with a service animal has a professional obligation to understand what that animal does and what it requires. That preparation belongs to the provider. Its absence transfers the risk to the participant.
This is a professional standard.
What the Certificate III Does Not Cover
The Certificate III in Individual Support is the standard qualification in this sector and takes between six and twelve months. For many workers, it is completed online with minimal supervised practice hours, and it does not prepare them for the clinical and ethical complexity of supporting people with invisible or fluctuating conditions.
A worker with their cert may have no framework for how fatigue functions in ME/CFS or autistic burnout. Why pushing through is sometimes dangerous, why capacity varies day to day in ways that cannot be read from a plan approved six months ago, and why the participant’s account of their own condition is the primary source of accurate information.
Workers who arrive without that preparation fill the gap with assumptions. Correcting those assumptions, educating the person sent to support them, translating their own experience into terms the worker finds legible — this falls to the participant. That work is skilled and exhausting, and no NDIS plan funds it.
A Plan Is Not a Person
An NDIS plan records approved supports, written at a point in time by a planner who may have spent an hour with the participant. What it cannot capture is what a Tuesday looks like after a bad night, or how that changes what Wednesday can hold.
Workers who treat the plan as a complete picture end up supporting the document. When the participant’s actual day diverges from what the plan implies, some workers become confused, inflexible, or subtly sceptical. The participant then carries that response throughout the day.
Confidentiality Is Not Discretionary
Support workers enter your home and learn about your health, medications, finances, and relationships. The ethical obligations around that information are clear. Workers routinely underestimate them.
Information moves in cars and waiting rooms, in casual exchanges during handover. Shared without consent in contexts the participant did not choose, each instance is a breach — and the pattern across a working relationship represents a significant, under-reported ethical problem in the sector.
Providers who do not train explicitly for this are not taking their duty of care seriously. The Commission’s framework addresses the most serious breaches. Below that threshold, the everyday end goes largely unmonitored.
A Diagnosis Is a Starting Point
Workers who arrive having already decided how a participant communicates — based on a diagnostic label rather than a conversation — are making a category error with professional consequences.
Autism produces significant variation across individuals, as do acquired brain injury, cerebral palsy, and many mental health conditions. Experience with one person transfers little to the next. The participant is the authority on their own communication and needs. Workers who approach that through the filter of what they already think they know require the participant to work harder to be accurately seen.
Being Present Is the Job
A worker on their phone during support hours has decided where their attention belongs. That decision reflects on the worker and the provider, and on a regulatory environment that permits it without consequence.
Participant time is funded. Divided attention during that time is a failure of basic professional conduct.
Punctuality Has Clinical Stakes
For participants with fatigue conditions, medication schedules, or appointment windows that cannot flex, a late worker is sometimes no worker at all. The window closes, an appointment is missed, and the energy available at nine o’clock is gone by ten.
Workers who treat punctuality as a matter of general courtesy have not been told what the costs of late arrival are in this context. Providers should tell them, in writing, before they begin.
Handover Exists for a Reason
When workers do not read handover notes, participants repeat themselves. Questions get asked that the notes had already answered. Avoidable errors get made. The first portion of support time becomes unpaid orientation, delivered by the person the support was supposed to serve.
Reading the handover is the floor — it signals that a worker understands preparation begins before they arrive.
The Re-Hiring Process
When a support worker leaves, the participant does not simply wait for a replacement. A position description must be written, applications reviewed, interviews conducted, and a hiring decision made with incomplete information about a person who will have access to their home, their medical records, and significant portions of their daily life.
After that comes orientation, and the contextual knowledge that made the previous support functional has to be rebuilt from the beginning.
None of this is funded. The NDIS has no category for the labour of maintaining access to support, and for participants with high support needs or complex conditions, that labour is substantial.
What Competent Support Looks Like
Workers who are good at this job arrive having read the available documentation, ask before they act, and give more weight to what the participant tells them about their own needs than to any plan or file. When something changes during a shift, the response is immediate and adaptive.
Their presence does not generate additional work for the participant — that is the measure. Support that requires the participant to manage, educate, or compensate for a worker’s preparation gaps has redistributed the load rather than reduced it.
What Needs to Change
Mandatory registration for all NDIS workers, regardless of how a participant’s plan is managed, would create a baseline of accountability. Genuine consequences for ethical breaches — including low-level, chronic ones — would change the conditions under which workers operate.
Revised training requirements are long overdue: supervised hours in complex support settings, explicit coverage of invisible conditions, service animal protocols, confidentiality obligations, and fluctuating capacity. These are the preparations the role demands.
Wages need to rise. Turnover in this sector is directly linked to pay, and the continuity of support is a safety condition for many participants — the relationship carries clinical knowledge that cannot be quickly or cheaply reconstructed.
Participants also need a complaints mechanism they can use without fear of losing their support. Accountability cannot depend on participants absorbing the risk of speaking up.
The Principle and the Practice
Participant choice and control sit at the centre of the NDIS. On paper, participants are experts in their own lives and directors of their own support.
That principle requires a workforce framework capable of supporting it. At present, workers enter participants’ lives with significant authority over their access, safety, and daily functioning, operating under training requirements and accountability mechanisms that do not match the weight of what they are being asked to do.
Positioned at the centre of a scheme designed around their needs, the participant often ends up holding the system together when it fails to hold itself together.
That is worth saying clearly, and worth changing.
Share this with someone who trains support workers, manages a disability provider, or influences workforce policy. The problem is documented. The changes required are known. What is missing is the will to treat this workforce and the people it serves with the seriousness they both deserve. #NDIS #DisabilityRights #DisabilitySupport #SupportWorkers #DisabledPeople #DisabilityAdvocacy #Accessibility #AusPol #Australia
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Anyone Can Be Your NDIS Support Worker. Who Is Keeping You Safe?
Reflections from several years on the scheme.
I have been on the NDIS for several years. A recent re-hiring process clarified something I had long suspected. The scheme has a workforce problem, and participants are the ones bearing the brunt.
There Is No Mandatory Registration Requirement
Under current Australian law, participants who self-manage or plan-manage their NDIS funding can hire any person as a support worker. Independent support Workers require no registration or minimum training standards.
The worker who enters your home, learns your medical history, handles your medications, and has significant authority over your daily life may have no formal preparation for any of it.
The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission exists and handles serious complaints, including abuse, neglect, and criminal conduct. Boundary violations, confidentiality breaches, and chronic unpreparedness that fall below that threshold leave participants largely without recourse. Skilled and ethical workers bring those qualities from their own formation and prior training. When those qualities are absent, the participant discovers this after the fact, and any remedy is slow, uncertain, and theirs alone to pursue.
That is the baseline. Everything that follows is built on it.
The Dog
My service dog performs specific medical functions. His effectiveness depends on remaining focused and oriented to me.
Some workers reach for him the moment they walk through the door. They do not ask.
Touching a service animal without permission is a safety violation and, in some contexts, carries legal weight under Australian disability discrimination law. A worker entering the home of a participant with a service animal has a professional obligation to understand what that animal does and what it requires. That preparation belongs to the provider. Its absence transfers the risk to the participant.
This is a professional standard.
What the Certificate III Does Not Cover
The Certificate III in Individual Support is the standard qualification in this sector and takes between six and twelve months. For many workers, it is completed online with minimal supervised practice hours, and it does not prepare them for the clinical and ethical complexity of supporting people with invisible or fluctuating conditions.
A worker with their cert may have no framework for how fatigue functions in ME/CFS or autistic burnout. Why pushing through is sometimes dangerous, why capacity varies day to day in ways that cannot be read from a plan approved six months ago, and why the participant’s account of their own condition is the primary source of accurate information.
Workers who arrive without that preparation fill the gap with assumptions. Correcting those assumptions, educating the person sent to support them, translating their own experience into terms the worker finds legible — this falls to the participant. That work is skilled and exhausting, and no NDIS plan funds it.
A Plan Is Not a Person
An NDIS plan records approved supports, written at a point in time by a planner who may have spent an hour with the participant. What it cannot capture is what a Tuesday looks like after a bad night, or how that changes what Wednesday can hold.
Workers who treat the plan as a complete picture end up supporting the document. When the participant’s actual day diverges from what the plan implies, some workers become confused, inflexible, or subtly sceptical. The participant then carries that response throughout the day.
Confidentiality Is Not Discretionary
Support workers enter your home and learn about your health, medications, finances, and relationships. The ethical obligations around that information are clear. Workers routinely underestimate them.
Information moves in cars and waiting rooms, in casual exchanges during handover. Shared without consent in contexts the participant did not choose, each instance is a breach — and the pattern across a working relationship represents a significant, under-reported ethical problem in the sector.
Providers who do not train explicitly for this are not taking their duty of care seriously. The Commission’s framework addresses the most serious breaches. Below that threshold, the everyday end goes largely unmonitored.
A Diagnosis Is a Starting Point
Workers who arrive having already decided how a participant communicates — based on a diagnostic label rather than a conversation — are making a category error with professional consequences.
Autism produces significant variation across individuals, as do acquired brain injury, cerebral palsy, and many mental health conditions. Experience with one person transfers little to the next. The participant is the authority on their own communication and needs. Workers who approach that through the filter of what they already think they know require the participant to work harder to be accurately seen.
Being Present Is the Job
A worker on their phone during support hours has decided where their attention belongs. That decision reflects on the worker and the provider, and on a regulatory environment that permits it without consequence.
Participant time is funded. Divided attention during that time is a failure of basic professional conduct.
Punctuality Has Clinical Stakes
For participants with fatigue conditions, medication schedules, or appointment windows that cannot flex, a late worker is sometimes no worker at all. The window closes, an appointment is missed, and the energy available at nine o’clock is gone by ten.
Workers who treat punctuality as a matter of general courtesy have not been told what the costs of late arrival are in this context. Providers should tell them, in writing, before they begin.
Handover Exists for a Reason
When workers do not read handover notes, participants repeat themselves. Questions get asked that the notes had already answered. Avoidable errors get made. The first portion of support time becomes unpaid orientation, delivered by the person the support was supposed to serve.
Reading the handover is the floor — it signals that a worker understands preparation begins before they arrive.
The Re-Hiring Process
When a support worker leaves, the participant does not simply wait for a replacement. A position description must be written, applications reviewed, interviews conducted, and a hiring decision made with incomplete information about a person who will have access to their home, their medical records, and significant portions of their daily life.
After that comes orientation, and the contextual knowledge that made the previous support functional has to be rebuilt from the beginning.
None of this is funded. The NDIS has no category for the labour of maintaining access to support, and for participants with high support needs or complex conditions, that labour is substantial.
What Competent Support Looks Like
Workers who are good at this job arrive having read the available documentation, ask before they act, and give more weight to what the participant tells them about their own needs than to any plan or file. When something changes during a shift, the response is immediate and adaptive.
Their presence does not generate additional work for the participant — that is the measure. Support that requires the participant to manage, educate, or compensate for a worker’s preparation gaps has redistributed the load rather than reduced it.
What Needs to Change
Mandatory registration for all NDIS workers, regardless of how a participant’s plan is managed, would create a baseline of accountability. Genuine consequences for ethical breaches — including low-level, chronic ones — would change the conditions under which workers operate.
Revised training requirements are long overdue: supervised hours in complex support settings, explicit coverage of invisible conditions, service animal protocols, confidentiality obligations, and fluctuating capacity. These are the preparations the role demands.
Wages need to rise. Turnover in this sector is directly linked to pay, and the continuity of support is a safety condition for many participants — the relationship carries clinical knowledge that cannot be quickly or cheaply reconstructed.
Participants also need a complaints mechanism they can use without fear of losing their support. Accountability cannot depend on participants absorbing the risk of speaking up.
The Principle and the Practice
Participant choice and control sit at the centre of the NDIS. On paper, participants are experts in their own lives and directors of their own support.
That principle requires a workforce framework capable of supporting it. At present, workers enter participants’ lives with significant authority over their access, safety, and daily functioning, operating under training requirements and accountability mechanisms that do not match the weight of what they are being asked to do.
Positioned at the centre of a scheme designed around their needs, the participant often ends up holding the system together when it fails to hold itself together.
That is worth saying clearly, and worth changing.
Share this with someone who trains support workers, manages a disability provider, or influences workforce policy. The problem is documented. The changes required are known. What is missing is the will to treat this workforce and the people it serves with the seriousness they both deserve. #NDIS #DisabilityRights #DisabilitySupport #SupportWorkers #DisabledPeople #DisabilityAdvocacy #Accessibility #AusPol #Australia
-
Anyone Can Be Your NDIS Support Worker. Who Is Keeping You Safe?
Reflections from several years on the scheme.
I have been on the NDIS for several years. A recent re-hiring process clarified something I had long suspected. The scheme has a workforce problem, and participants are the ones bearing the brunt.
There Is No Mandatory Registration Requirement
Under current Australian law, participants who self-manage or plan-manage their NDIS funding can hire any person as a support worker. Independent support Workers require no registration or minimum training standards.
The worker who enters your home, learns your medical history, handles your medications, and has significant authority over your daily life may have no formal preparation for any of it.
The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission exists and handles serious complaints, including abuse, neglect, and criminal conduct. Boundary violations, confidentiality breaches, and chronic unpreparedness that fall below that threshold leave participants largely without recourse. Skilled and ethical workers bring those qualities from their own formation and prior training. When those qualities are absent, the participant discovers this after the fact, and any remedy is slow, uncertain, and theirs alone to pursue.
That is the baseline. Everything that follows is built on it.
The Dog
My service dog performs specific medical functions. His effectiveness depends on remaining focused and oriented to me.
Some workers reach for him the moment they walk through the door. They do not ask.
Touching a service animal without permission is a safety violation and, in some contexts, carries legal weight under Australian disability discrimination law. A worker entering the home of a participant with a service animal has a professional obligation to understand what that animal does and what it requires. That preparation belongs to the provider. Its absence transfers the risk to the participant.
This is a professional standard.
What the Certificate III Does Not Cover
The Certificate III in Individual Support is the standard qualification in this sector and takes between six and twelve months. For many workers, it is completed online with minimal supervised practice hours, and it does not prepare them for the clinical and ethical complexity of supporting people with invisible or fluctuating conditions.
A worker with their cert may have no framework for how fatigue functions in ME/CFS or autistic burnout. Why pushing through is sometimes dangerous, why capacity varies day to day in ways that cannot be read from a plan approved six months ago, and why the participant’s account of their own condition is the primary source of accurate information.
Workers who arrive without that preparation fill the gap with assumptions. Correcting those assumptions, educating the person sent to support them, translating their own experience into terms the worker finds legible — this falls to the participant. That work is skilled and exhausting, and no NDIS plan funds it.
A Plan Is Not a Person
An NDIS plan records approved supports, written at a point in time by a planner who may have spent an hour with the participant. What it cannot capture is what a Tuesday looks like after a bad night, or how that changes what Wednesday can hold.
Workers who treat the plan as a complete picture end up supporting the document. When the participant’s actual day diverges from what the plan implies, some workers become confused, inflexible, or subtly sceptical. The participant then carries that response throughout the day.
Confidentiality Is Not Discretionary
Support workers enter your home and learn about your health, medications, finances, and relationships. The ethical obligations around that information are clear. Workers routinely underestimate them.
Information moves in cars and waiting rooms, in casual exchanges during handover. Shared without consent in contexts the participant did not choose, each instance is a breach — and the pattern across a working relationship represents a significant, under-reported ethical problem in the sector.
Providers who do not train explicitly for this are not taking their duty of care seriously. The Commission’s framework addresses the most serious breaches. Below that threshold, the everyday end goes largely unmonitored.
A Diagnosis Is a Starting Point
Workers who arrive having already decided how a participant communicates — based on a diagnostic label rather than a conversation — are making a category error with professional consequences.
Autism produces significant variation across individuals, as do acquired brain injury, cerebral palsy, and many mental health conditions. Experience with one person transfers little to the next. The participant is the authority on their own communication and needs. Workers who approach that through the filter of what they already think they know require the participant to work harder to be accurately seen.
Being Present Is the Job
A worker on their phone during support hours has decided where their attention belongs. That decision reflects on the worker and the provider, and on a regulatory environment that permits it without consequence.
Participant time is funded. Divided attention during that time is a failure of basic professional conduct.
Punctuality Has Clinical Stakes
For participants with fatigue conditions, medication schedules, or appointment windows that cannot flex, a late worker is sometimes no worker at all. The window closes, an appointment is missed, and the energy available at nine o’clock is gone by ten.
Workers who treat punctuality as a matter of general courtesy have not been told what the costs of late arrival are in this context. Providers should tell them, in writing, before they begin.
Handover Exists for a Reason
When workers do not read handover notes, participants repeat themselves. Questions get asked that the notes had already answered. Avoidable errors get made. The first portion of support time becomes unpaid orientation, delivered by the person the support was supposed to serve.
Reading the handover is the floor — it signals that a worker understands preparation begins before they arrive.
The Re-Hiring Process
When a support worker leaves, the participant does not simply wait for a replacement. A position description must be written, applications reviewed, interviews conducted, and a hiring decision made with incomplete information about a person who will have access to their home, their medical records, and significant portions of their daily life.
After that comes orientation, and the contextual knowledge that made the previous support functional has to be rebuilt from the beginning.
None of this is funded. The NDIS has no category for the labour of maintaining access to support, and for participants with high support needs or complex conditions, that labour is substantial.
What Competent Support Looks Like
Workers who are good at this job arrive having read the available documentation, ask before they act, and give more weight to what the participant tells them about their own needs than to any plan or file. When something changes during a shift, the response is immediate and adaptive.
Their presence does not generate additional work for the participant — that is the measure. Support that requires the participant to manage, educate, or compensate for a worker’s preparation gaps has redistributed the load rather than reduced it.
What Needs to Change
Mandatory registration for all NDIS workers, regardless of how a participant’s plan is managed, would create a baseline of accountability. Genuine consequences for ethical breaches — including low-level, chronic ones — would change the conditions under which workers operate.
Revised training requirements are long overdue: supervised hours in complex support settings, explicit coverage of invisible conditions, service animal protocols, confidentiality obligations, and fluctuating capacity. These are the preparations the role demands.
Wages need to rise. Turnover in this sector is directly linked to pay, and the continuity of support is a safety condition for many participants — the relationship carries clinical knowledge that cannot be quickly or cheaply reconstructed.
Participants also need a complaints mechanism they can use without fear of losing their support. Accountability cannot depend on participants absorbing the risk of speaking up.
The Principle and the Practice
Participant choice and control sit at the centre of the NDIS. On paper, participants are experts in their own lives and directors of their own support.
That principle requires a workforce framework capable of supporting it. At present, workers enter participants’ lives with significant authority over their access, safety, and daily functioning, operating under training requirements and accountability mechanisms that do not match the weight of what they are being asked to do.
Positioned at the centre of a scheme designed around their needs, the participant often ends up holding the system together when it fails to hold itself together.
That is worth saying clearly, and worth changing.
Share this with someone who trains support workers, manages a disability provider, or influences workforce policy. The problem is documented. The changes required are known. What is missing is the will to treat this workforce and the people it serves with the seriousness they both deserve. #NDIS #DisabilityRights #DisabilitySupport #SupportWorkers #DisabledPeople #DisabilityAdvocacy #Accessibility #AusPol #Australia
-
Anyone Can Be Your NDIS Support Worker. Who Is Keeping You Safe?
Reflections from several years on the scheme.
I have been on the NDIS for several years. A recent re-hiring process clarified something I had long suspected. The scheme has a workforce problem, and participants are the ones bearing the brunt.
There Is No Mandatory Registration Requirement
Under current Australian law, participants who self-manage or plan-manage their NDIS funding can hire any person as a support worker. Independent support Workers require no registration or minimum training standards.
The worker who enters your home, learns your medical history, handles your medications, and has significant authority over your daily life may have no formal preparation for any of it.
The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission exists and handles serious complaints, including abuse, neglect, and criminal conduct. Boundary violations, confidentiality breaches, and chronic unpreparedness that fall below that threshold leave participants largely without recourse. Skilled and ethical workers bring those qualities from their own formation and prior training. When those qualities are absent, the participant discovers this after the fact, and any remedy is slow, uncertain, and theirs alone to pursue.
That is the baseline. Everything that follows is built on it.
The Dog
My service dog performs specific medical functions. His effectiveness depends on remaining focused and oriented to me.
Some workers reach for him the moment they walk through the door. They do not ask.
Touching a service animal without permission is a safety violation and, in some contexts, carries legal weight under Australian disability discrimination law. A worker entering the home of a participant with a service animal has a professional obligation to understand what that animal does and what it requires. That preparation belongs to the provider. Its absence transfers the risk to the participant.
This is a professional standard.
What the Certificate III Does Not Cover
The Certificate III in Individual Support is the standard qualification in this sector and takes between six and twelve months. For many workers, it is completed online with minimal supervised practice hours, and it does not prepare them for the clinical and ethical complexity of supporting people with invisible or fluctuating conditions.
A worker with their cert may have no framework for how fatigue functions in ME/CFS or autistic burnout. Why pushing through is sometimes dangerous, why capacity varies day to day in ways that cannot be read from a plan approved six months ago, and why the participant’s account of their own condition is the primary source of accurate information.
Workers who arrive without that preparation fill the gap with assumptions. Correcting those assumptions, educating the person sent to support them, translating their own experience into terms the worker finds legible — this falls to the participant. That work is skilled and exhausting, and no NDIS plan funds it.
A Plan Is Not a Person
An NDIS plan records approved supports, written at a point in time by a planner who may have spent an hour with the participant. What it cannot capture is what a Tuesday looks like after a bad night, or how that changes what Wednesday can hold.
Workers who treat the plan as a complete picture end up supporting the document. When the participant’s actual day diverges from what the plan implies, some workers become confused, inflexible, or subtly sceptical. The participant then carries that response throughout the day.
Confidentiality Is Not Discretionary
Support workers enter your home and learn about your health, medications, finances, and relationships. The ethical obligations around that information are clear. Workers routinely underestimate them.
Information moves in cars and waiting rooms, in casual exchanges during handover. Shared without consent in contexts the participant did not choose, each instance is a breach — and the pattern across a working relationship represents a significant, under-reported ethical problem in the sector.
Providers who do not train explicitly for this are not taking their duty of care seriously. The Commission’s framework addresses the most serious breaches. Below that threshold, the everyday end goes largely unmonitored.
A Diagnosis Is a Starting Point
Workers who arrive having already decided how a participant communicates — based on a diagnostic label rather than a conversation — are making a category error with professional consequences.
Autism produces significant variation across individuals, as do acquired brain injury, cerebral palsy, and many mental health conditions. Experience with one person transfers little to the next. The participant is the authority on their own communication and needs. Workers who approach that through the filter of what they already think they know require the participant to work harder to be accurately seen.
Being Present Is the Job
A worker on their phone during support hours has decided where their attention belongs. That decision reflects on the worker and the provider, and on a regulatory environment that permits it without consequence.
Participant time is funded. Divided attention during that time is a failure of basic professional conduct.
Punctuality Has Clinical Stakes
For participants with fatigue conditions, medication schedules, or appointment windows that cannot flex, a late worker is sometimes no worker at all. The window closes, an appointment is missed, and the energy available at nine o’clock is gone by ten.
Workers who treat punctuality as a matter of general courtesy have not been told what the costs of late arrival are in this context. Providers should tell them, in writing, before they begin.
Handover Exists for a Reason
When workers do not read handover notes, participants repeat themselves. Questions get asked that the notes had already answered. Avoidable errors get made. The first portion of support time becomes unpaid orientation, delivered by the person the support was supposed to serve.
Reading the handover is the floor — it signals that a worker understands preparation begins before they arrive.
The Re-Hiring Process
When a support worker leaves, the participant does not simply wait for a replacement. A position description must be written, applications reviewed, interviews conducted, and a hiring decision made with incomplete information about a person who will have access to their home, their medical records, and significant portions of their daily life.
After that comes orientation, and the contextual knowledge that made the previous support functional has to be rebuilt from the beginning.
None of this is funded. The NDIS has no category for the labour of maintaining access to support, and for participants with high support needs or complex conditions, that labour is substantial.
What Competent Support Looks Like
Workers who are good at this job arrive having read the available documentation, ask before they act, and give more weight to what the participant tells them about their own needs than to any plan or file. When something changes during a shift, the response is immediate and adaptive.
Their presence does not generate additional work for the participant — that is the measure. Support that requires the participant to manage, educate, or compensate for a worker’s preparation gaps has redistributed the load rather than reduced it.
What Needs to Change
Mandatory registration for all NDIS workers, regardless of how a participant’s plan is managed, would create a baseline of accountability. Genuine consequences for ethical breaches — including low-level, chronic ones — would change the conditions under which workers operate.
Revised training requirements are long overdue: supervised hours in complex support settings, explicit coverage of invisible conditions, service animal protocols, confidentiality obligations, and fluctuating capacity. These are the preparations the role demands.
Wages need to rise. Turnover in this sector is directly linked to pay, and the continuity of support is a safety condition for many participants — the relationship carries clinical knowledge that cannot be quickly or cheaply reconstructed.
Participants also need a complaints mechanism they can use without fear of losing their support. Accountability cannot depend on participants absorbing the risk of speaking up.
The Principle and the Practice
Participant choice and control sit at the centre of the NDIS. On paper, participants are experts in their own lives and directors of their own support.
That principle requires a workforce framework capable of supporting it. At present, workers enter participants’ lives with significant authority over their access, safety, and daily functioning, operating under training requirements and accountability mechanisms that do not match the weight of what they are being asked to do.
Positioned at the centre of a scheme designed around their needs, the participant often ends up holding the system together when it fails to hold itself together.
That is worth saying clearly, and worth changing.
Share this with someone who trains support workers, manages a disability provider, or influences workforce policy. The problem is documented. The changes required are known. What is missing is the will to treat this workforce and the people it serves with the seriousness they both deserve. #NDIS #DisabilityRights #DisabilitySupport #SupportWorkers #DisabledPeople #DisabilityAdvocacy #Accessibility #AusPol #Australia
-
Anyone Can Be Your NDIS Support Worker. Who Is Keeping You Safe?
Reflections from several years on the scheme.
I have been on the NDIS for several years. A recent re-hiring process clarified something I had long suspected. The scheme has a workforce problem, and participants are the ones bearing the brunt.
There Is No Mandatory Registration Requirement
Under current Australian law, participants who self-manage or plan-manage their NDIS funding can hire any person as a support worker. Independent support Workers require no registration or minimum training standards.
The worker who enters your home, learns your medical history, handles your medications, and has significant authority over your daily life may have no formal preparation for any of it.
The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission exists and handles serious complaints, including abuse, neglect, and criminal conduct. Boundary violations, confidentiality breaches, and chronic unpreparedness that fall below that threshold leave participants largely without recourse. Skilled and ethical workers bring those qualities from their own formation and prior training. When those qualities are absent, the participant discovers this after the fact, and any remedy is slow, uncertain, and theirs alone to pursue.
That is the baseline. Everything that follows is built on it.
The Dog
My service dog performs specific medical functions. His effectiveness depends on remaining focused and oriented to me.
Some workers reach for him the moment they walk through the door. They do not ask.
Touching a service animal without permission is a safety violation and, in some contexts, carries legal weight under Australian disability discrimination law. A worker entering the home of a participant with a service animal has a professional obligation to understand what that animal does and what it requires. That preparation belongs to the provider. Its absence transfers the risk to the participant.
This is a professional standard.
What the Certificate III Does Not Cover
The Certificate III in Individual Support is the standard qualification in this sector and takes between six and twelve months. For many workers, it is completed online with minimal supervised practice hours, and it does not prepare them for the clinical and ethical complexity of supporting people with invisible or fluctuating conditions.
A worker with their cert may have no framework for how fatigue functions in ME/CFS or autistic burnout. Why pushing through is sometimes dangerous, why capacity varies day to day in ways that cannot be read from a plan approved six months ago, and why the participant’s account of their own condition is the primary source of accurate information.
Workers who arrive without that preparation fill the gap with assumptions. Correcting those assumptions, educating the person sent to support them, translating their own experience into terms the worker finds legible — this falls to the participant. That work is skilled and exhausting, and no NDIS plan funds it.
A Plan Is Not a Person
An NDIS plan records approved supports, written at a point in time by a planner who may have spent an hour with the participant. What it cannot capture is what a Tuesday looks like after a bad night, or how that changes what Wednesday can hold.
Workers who treat the plan as a complete picture end up supporting the document. When the participant’s actual day diverges from what the plan implies, some workers become confused, inflexible, or subtly sceptical. The participant then carries that response throughout the day.
Confidentiality Is Not Discretionary
Support workers enter your home and learn about your health, medications, finances, and relationships. The ethical obligations around that information are clear. Workers routinely underestimate them.
Information moves in cars and waiting rooms, in casual exchanges during handover. Shared without consent in contexts the participant did not choose, each instance is a breach — and the pattern across a working relationship represents a significant, under-reported ethical problem in the sector.
Providers who do not train explicitly for this are not taking their duty of care seriously. The Commission’s framework addresses the most serious breaches. Below that threshold, the everyday end goes largely unmonitored.
A Diagnosis Is a Starting Point
Workers who arrive having already decided how a participant communicates — based on a diagnostic label rather than a conversation — are making a category error with professional consequences.
Autism produces significant variation across individuals, as do acquired brain injury, cerebral palsy, and many mental health conditions. Experience with one person transfers little to the next. The participant is the authority on their own communication and needs. Workers who approach that through the filter of what they already think they know require the participant to work harder to be accurately seen.
Being Present Is the Job
A worker on their phone during support hours has decided where their attention belongs. That decision reflects on the worker and the provider, and on a regulatory environment that permits it without consequence.
Participant time is funded. Divided attention during that time is a failure of basic professional conduct.
Punctuality Has Clinical Stakes
For participants with fatigue conditions, medication schedules, or appointment windows that cannot flex, a late worker is sometimes no worker at all. The window closes, an appointment is missed, and the energy available at nine o’clock is gone by ten.
Workers who treat punctuality as a matter of general courtesy have not been told what the costs of late arrival are in this context. Providers should tell them, in writing, before they begin.
Handover Exists for a Reason
When workers do not read handover notes, participants repeat themselves. Questions get asked that the notes had already answered. Avoidable errors get made. The first portion of support time becomes unpaid orientation, delivered by the person the support was supposed to serve.
Reading the handover is the floor — it signals that a worker understands preparation begins before they arrive.
The Re-Hiring Process
When a support worker leaves, the participant does not simply wait for a replacement. A position description must be written, applications reviewed, interviews conducted, and a hiring decision made with incomplete information about a person who will have access to their home, their medical records, and significant portions of their daily life.
After that comes orientation, and the contextual knowledge that made the previous support functional has to be rebuilt from the beginning.
None of this is funded. The NDIS has no category for the labour of maintaining access to support, and for participants with high support needs or complex conditions, that labour is substantial.
What Competent Support Looks Like
Workers who are good at this job arrive having read the available documentation, ask before they act, and give more weight to what the participant tells them about their own needs than to any plan or file. When something changes during a shift, the response is immediate and adaptive.
Their presence does not generate additional work for the participant — that is the measure. Support that requires the participant to manage, educate, or compensate for a worker’s preparation gaps has redistributed the load rather than reduced it.
What Needs to Change
Mandatory registration for all NDIS workers, regardless of how a participant’s plan is managed, would create a baseline of accountability. Genuine consequences for ethical breaches — including low-level, chronic ones — would change the conditions under which workers operate.
Revised training requirements are long overdue: supervised hours in complex support settings, explicit coverage of invisible conditions, service animal protocols, confidentiality obligations, and fluctuating capacity. These are the preparations the role demands.
Wages need to rise. Turnover in this sector is directly linked to pay, and the continuity of support is a safety condition for many participants — the relationship carries clinical knowledge that cannot be quickly or cheaply reconstructed.
Participants also need a complaints mechanism they can use without fear of losing their support. Accountability cannot depend on participants absorbing the risk of speaking up.
The Principle and the Practice
Participant choice and control sit at the centre of the NDIS. On paper, participants are experts in their own lives and directors of their own support.
That principle requires a workforce framework capable of supporting it. At present, workers enter participants’ lives with significant authority over their access, safety, and daily functioning, operating under training requirements and accountability mechanisms that do not match the weight of what they are being asked to do.
Positioned at the centre of a scheme designed around their needs, the participant often ends up holding the system together when it fails to hold itself together.
That is worth saying clearly, and worth changing.
Share this with someone who trains support workers, manages a disability provider, or influences workforce policy. The problem is documented. The changes required are known. What is missing is the will to treat this workforce and the people it serves with the seriousness they both deserve. #NDIS #DisabilityRights #DisabilitySupport #SupportWorkers #DisabledPeople #DisabilityAdvocacy #Accessibility #AusPol #Australia
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@Tutanota Show us by your actions, not just words! So far you've shown in your actions, both for those with #MobilityImpairments on Captchas and for #blind users a screenreader issue, that your platform is not at all about #DigitalIndependence or real change, unless you've got neither disability set nor anyone you communicate with does.
#DisabledPeople are the subset of the population most denied our independence and yet which is most easily helped by modern technology, so this slight on your part is a continuation of the larger problem set, not a legitimate change to the status quo.
#DisabilityAccessibility #DisabilityRights -
On International Day of #People with #Disabilities, please note some disabilities are #invisible
#invisibleillness #disabled #disabledpeople #DisabilityRights #DisabilityRightsAreHumanRights
#IDPD #IDPD2025 #IDPD25 #IDPWD #IDPWD25 #IDPWD2025 #Disability
@mecfs @longcovid @pots
#LongCovid #MEcfs #CFS #PwME #hiddenillness #chronicillness #Invisibledisability -
Comedian Samay Raina Apologizes for Disability Jokes After Court Order
#apology #disabledpeople #IndiasGotLatent #SamayRaina #SupremeCourt
https://blazetrends.com/comedian-samay-raina-apologizes-for-disability-jokes-after-court-order/?fsp_sid=158010 -
People who refuse to consult with & listen to valid, lived experienced voices from #PeopleWithDisabilities are folks committed to their #ableism. Straight up.
Don't make excuses for #ableists who don't care about #DisabledPeople & don't want to make any changes to contribute to a more diverse & #accessible world/community.
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Hmmmm... What a coincidence!
#Trump Pledges Unconstitutional Order to Limit Mail-In Voting After #Putin Chat
The president demanded that states do what the federal government “tells them,” after announcing an executive order aimed at banning #MaiIinVoting
By Nikki McCann Ramirez, Asawin Suebsaeng, August 18, 2025
"August 14, 2025.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images"President Donald Trump pledged Monday that he will try to eliminate mail-in voting, after telling Fox News that authoritarian Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed with him on the subject during their meeting last week.
"Despite lacking any sort of constitutional power on the matter, Trump declared in a Truth Social post that he would sign an executive order to 'help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections,' and attempt to strip states of their independent authority to oversee elections, and is demanding they just do what he tells them to."
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/3EzXI#USPol #TrumpIsAFascist #TrumpIsPutinsPuppet
#Authoritarianism #ElectionBarriers
#VoterDisenfranchisement
#OverseasBallots #DisabledPeoplesBallots #DisabledPeople #Immunocompromised #StatesRights #SAVEAct #SAVEAmericaAct -
From #LawrenceBritt's #CharacteristicsOfFascism
14. #FraudulentElections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by #SmearCampaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control #voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.#Trump says he will lead 'movement' to end #MailInVoting
Trump said he'll begin his efforts by signing an executive order.
By Hannah Demissie
August 18, 2025"The Constitution gives power to state legislatures to determine the 'times, places and manner; of holding elections, subject to acts of Congress that regulate the process."
#USPol #TrumpIsAFascist #Authoritarianism #ElectionBarriers #VoterDisenfranchisement #OverseasBallots #DisabledPeoplesBallots #DisabledPeople #Immunocompromised
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*This is verified & legit.*
#CripsForESims for #Gaza.
Crips for eSims for Gaza is a collaboration between Jane Shi, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Alice Wong.
#DisabledPeople around the world are raising funds to get as many #eSims as we can into Gaza.
https://chuffed.org/project/crips-for-esims-for-gaza
See full #crowdfund description at Disability Visibility. https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2023/12/25/crips-for-esims-for-gaza/
Check out our financial accountability document.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19eIZS0SRDAlOnjr9gf5BxTyOIayIaLmfuEZPVDad2vo/edit#heading=h.imodxs9x93li"We want to get money and resources directly to Palestinians in Gaza, however, as many people know, the blockade has made it almost impossible to get cash and resources into Gaza. One way that is possible is getting people eSims."
Important Note (read carefully before donating!):
We have several volunteers purchasing eSims in the States and in the UK. We are hoping to reimburse them without international transaction fees within PayPal and have opened up the following options to help us do so.
For folks who are in the States and using Venmo, please consider donating directly to Emily, who will be helping us to reimburse people directly without conversion rate and international transaction fees.
https://venmo.com/u/emxdengPlease do not donate send funds through Venmo or Zelle via our main email; we do not have an official Venmo or Zelle account!
For folks in the UK and using Paypal, please consider donating directly to one of our UK-based volunteers, Divya.
https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=FKU748EGMBCNEFor those in Canada: e-transfer [email protected] (autodeposit on!)
#FreePalestine #PeopleWithDisabilities #HelpGaza #HelpPalestinians #Fundraising #Fundraiser #StopGenocide #StopStarvation #Humanitarians #Charity
-
*This is verified & legit.*
#CripsForESims for #Gaza.
Crips for eSims for Gaza is a collaboration between Jane Shi, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Alice Wong.
#DisabledPeople around the world are raising funds to get as many #eSims as we can into Gaza.
https://chuffed.org/project/crips-for-esims-for-gaza
See full #crowdfund description at Disability Visibility. https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2023/12/25/crips-for-esims-for-gaza/
Check out our financial accountability document.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19eIZS0SRDAlOnjr9gf5BxTyOIayIaLmfuEZPVDad2vo/edit#heading=h.imodxs9x93li"We want to get money and resources directly to Palestinians in Gaza, however, as many people know, the blockade has made it almost impossible to get cash and resources into Gaza. One way that is possible is getting people eSims."
Important Note (read carefully before donating!):
We have several volunteers purchasing eSims in the States and in the UK. We are hoping to reimburse them without international transaction fees within PayPal and have opened up the following options to help us do so.
For folks who are in the States and using Venmo, please consider donating directly to Emily, who will be helping us to reimburse people directly without conversion rate and international transaction fees.
https://venmo.com/u/emxdengPlease do not donate send funds through Venmo or Zelle via our main email; we do not have an official Venmo or Zelle account!
For folks in the UK and using Paypal, please consider donating directly to one of our UK-based volunteers, Divya.
https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=FKU748EGMBCNEFor those in Canada: e-transfer [email protected] (autodeposit on!)
#FreePalestine #PeopleWithDisabilities #HelpGaza #HelpPalestinians #Fundraising #Fundraiser #StopGenocide #StopStarvation #Humanitarians #Charity
-
*This is verified & legit.*
#CripsForESims for #Gaza.
Crips for eSims for Gaza is a collaboration between Jane Shi, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Alice Wong.
#DisabledPeople around the world are raising funds to get as many #eSims as we can into Gaza.
https://chuffed.org/project/crips-for-esims-for-gaza
See full #crowdfund description at Disability Visibility. https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2023/12/25/crips-for-esims-for-gaza/
Check out our financial accountability document.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19eIZS0SRDAlOnjr9gf5BxTyOIayIaLmfuEZPVDad2vo/edit#heading=h.imodxs9x93li"We want to get money and resources directly to Palestinians in Gaza, however, as many people know, the blockade has made it almost impossible to get cash and resources into Gaza. One way that is possible is getting people eSims."
Important Note (read carefully before donating!):
We have several volunteers purchasing eSims in the States and in the UK. We are hoping to reimburse them without international transaction fees within PayPal and have opened up the following options to help us do so.
For folks who are in the States and using Venmo, please consider donating directly to Emily, who will be helping us to reimburse people directly without conversion rate and international transaction fees.
https://venmo.com/u/emxdengPlease do not donate send funds through Venmo or Zelle via our main email; we do not have an official Venmo or Zelle account!
For folks in the UK and using Paypal, please consider donating directly to one of our UK-based volunteers, Divya.
https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=FKU748EGMBCNEFor those in Canada: e-transfer [email protected] (autodeposit on!)
#FreePalestine #PeopleWithDisabilities #HelpGaza #HelpPalestinians #Fundraising #Fundraiser #StopGenocide #StopStarvation #Humanitarians #Charity
-
*This is verified & legit.*
#CripsForESims for #Gaza.
Crips for eSims for Gaza is a collaboration between Jane Shi, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Alice Wong.
#DisabledPeople around the world are raising funds to get as many #eSims as we can into Gaza.
https://chuffed.org/project/crips-for-esims-for-gaza
See full #crowdfund description at Disability Visibility. https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2023/12/25/crips-for-esims-for-gaza/
Check out our financial accountability document.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19eIZS0SRDAlOnjr9gf5BxTyOIayIaLmfuEZPVDad2vo/edit#heading=h.imodxs9x93li"We want to get money and resources directly to Palestinians in Gaza, however, as many people know, the blockade has made it almost impossible to get cash and resources into Gaza. One way that is possible is getting people eSims."
Important Note (read carefully before donating!):
We have several volunteers purchasing eSims in the States and in the UK. We are hoping to reimburse them without international transaction fees within PayPal and have opened up the following options to help us do so.
For folks who are in the States and using Venmo, please consider donating directly to Emily, who will be helping us to reimburse people directly without conversion rate and international transaction fees.
https://venmo.com/u/emxdengPlease do not donate send funds through Venmo or Zelle via our main email; we do not have an official Venmo or Zelle account!
For folks in the UK and using Paypal, please consider donating directly to one of our UK-based volunteers, Divya.
https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=FKU748EGMBCNEFor those in Canada: e-transfer [email protected] (autodeposit on!)
#FreePalestine #PeopleWithDisabilities #HelpGaza #HelpPalestinians #Fundraising #Fundraiser #StopGenocide #StopStarvation #Humanitarians #Charity
-
*This is verified & legit.*
#CripsForESims for #Gaza.
Crips for eSims for Gaza is a collaboration between Jane Shi, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Alice Wong.
#DisabledPeople around the world are raising funds to get as many #eSims as we can into Gaza.
https://chuffed.org/project/crips-for-esims-for-gaza
See full #crowdfund description at Disability Visibility. https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2023/12/25/crips-for-esims-for-gaza/
Check out our financial accountability document.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19eIZS0SRDAlOnjr9gf5BxTyOIayIaLmfuEZPVDad2vo/edit#heading=h.imodxs9x93li"We want to get money and resources directly to Palestinians in Gaza, however, as many people know, the blockade has made it almost impossible to get cash and resources into Gaza. One way that is possible is getting people eSims."
Important Note (read carefully before donating!):
We have several volunteers purchasing eSims in the States and in the UK. We are hoping to reimburse them without international transaction fees within PayPal and have opened up the following options to help us do so.
For folks who are in the States and using Venmo, please consider donating directly to Emily, who will be helping us to reimburse people directly without conversion rate and international transaction fees.
https://venmo.com/u/emxdengPlease do not donate send funds through Venmo or Zelle via our main email; we do not have an official Venmo or Zelle account!
For folks in the UK and using Paypal, please consider donating directly to one of our UK-based volunteers, Divya.
https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=FKU748EGMBCNEFor those in Canada: e-transfer [email protected] (autodeposit on!)
#FreePalestine #PeopleWithDisabilities #HelpGaza #HelpPalestinians #Fundraising #Fundraiser #StopGenocide #StopStarvation #Humanitarians #Charity
-
TODAY!
#WearRed. Make a Pledge. Support #Canadians living with #disabilities.
Join #EasterSeals in the movement for #accessibility , #inclusion , and #equity ! Take part in #RedShirtDay on Wednesday, May 28, 2025 by wearing red, making a pledge, and supporting Canadians living with disabilities.
Established by Easter Seals #Canada in 2019, this annual event takes place on the Wednesday of National #AccessAbility Week each year.
Red Shirt Day® is more than just wearing red; it’s also about making a commitment to remove physical, attitudinal, and #SystemicBarriers to accessibility and inclusion in your school, workplace, or community.
#PeopleWithDisabilities #DisabledPeople #Disability #Solidarity #SupportTheDisabled #Inclusiveness #AccessForAll
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Journalists discovered alt text in 2025 and suddenly realized that disabled people exist 😮. Apparently, explaining images with words is groundbreaking news 📰. Who knew that #accessibility mattered? 🙄 #WelcomeToTheFuture
https://joemurph.com/article/detail/social-media-alt-text-for-journalists/ #Journalism #AltText #DisabledPeople #GroundbreakingNews #HackerNews #ngated -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_o0yD5gNQY
#DisabledPeople explain the real cost of #LIEBour's #welfarecuts
#TricommissionStarmer #KeirtStalin #RedTories
#RachelTHIEVES#ClassWar #Austerity #Inequality #PIP
The Labour Party HATES Humans
-
https://www.propublica.org/article/doge-social-security-elon-musk-trump-closures-benefits
#ProPublica 22 Feb 2025
#DOGEHitlerYouth and #SocialSecurity
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5202848-social-security-in-office-visits/
Requiring people to show up to #SSI offices starting 31 March 2025, won't work for many disabled and seniors, esp. since many offices are CLOSING!
#USAFascistShitShow #FIGHTBACK
Where are the protests to stop #DOGE, Trump nd #AdolphMusk from interfering with #SocialSecurity?
Don't American activists have #seniors or #disabledpeople in their lives?
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And if #RFKJr gets his way...
#Autistic woman wrongly locked up in mental health hospital for 45 years
by Carolyn Atkinson and Ben Robinson, March 4, 2025
"An autistic woman with a learning disability was wrongly locked up in a mental health hospital for 45 years, starting when she was just seven years old, the BBC has learned.
"The woman, who is believed to be originally from Sierra Leone, and who was given the name Kasibba by the local authority to protect her identity, was also held on her own in long-term segregation for 25 years.
"Kasibba is non-verbal and had no family to speak up for her. A clinical psychologist told File on 4 Investigates how she had begun a nine-year battle to release her.
"The Department of Health and Social Care told the BBC it was unacceptable that so many disabled people were still being held in mental health hospitals and said it hoped reforms to the Mental Health Act would prevent inappropriate detention."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly43png991o
#HumanRights #AutisticRights #DisabledPeople #UKPol #USPol -
#ForcedSterilization is a worldwide problem!
As #Japan starts compensation payments, #ForcedSterilisation continues around the world
#NonConsensual #sterilisation of those considered genetically inferior persists in some parts of the world today
by Ewan Bolton, 18 February 2025
"Just last week, in the Miyagi prefecture of Japan, the local governor met victims of an official eugenics policy to apologise for the suffering they underwent.
"'On behalf of the prefecture, I would like to offer my heartfelt apologies for the immense suffering caused to the 900 (victims),' said Murai Yoshihiro while lowering his head.
"For many, the words 'forced sterilisation' bring to mind #NaziGermany and the devastating #eugenic policies pursued by #fascist regimes in the 1930s and 1940s. But the non-consensual sterilisation of those considered genetically inferior continued through the 20th century and persists in some parts of the world today.
"In January, victims of Japan’s forced sterilisation programme were finally able to apply for compensation for the first time. Between 1948 and 1996, at least 16,500 people were forcibly sterilised in Japan under the country’s #EugenicProtectionLaw. Nearly 60,000 more underwent #abortions without, or with only dubious consent. Most were mentally handicapped people or those with hereditary diseases.
"As Japan finally addresses this legacy, victims of forced sterilisation in #Peru are still fighting for compensation after 370,000 people were sterilised in what the UN has described as a potential crime against humanity. And in the #UnitedStates, #India, #China and parts of #Europe, non-consensual sterilisations continue to this day.
"As with the Nazis, almost all cases can be traced back to the discredited #PseudoScience of eugenics which was developed in the #UK at around the turn of the last century and had many supporters, including #WinstonChurchill.
"Japan’s Eugenic Protection Law was introduced in the wake of World War II. It granted medical institutions the right to administer sterilisations and abortions without the consent of patients. Of the 25,000 people sterilised under the programme, according to government figures only 8,000 gave consent. The legitimacy of the consent in these cases is disputed.
"A large number of the victims were children, some as young as nine years old. In Miyagi prefecture, in the northwest of the main island, more than half of the 859 sterilised between 1963 and 1981 were under the age of 18.
"At a press conference last month in Hyogo prefecture, a #DeafWoman, now in her 80s, described the emotional pain of being given an abortion without her consent. 'I was taken to the hospital, and I thought I would be going to the general medicine department. I was very surprised because I was taken to the gynaecology department … I am unable to forget what happened at that time'.
"In her prefecture alone, there are '14 or 15 other [#DeafPeople] who suffered harm' that are known about, 'but there are undoubtedly more', said Yoshimichi Hongo, chairman of the Hyogo Prefecture Association for the Deaf."
Read more:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/women-and-girls/as-japan-starts-compensation-payments-forced-sterilisation/
#WorldPol #reproductiverights #Fascism #BodilyAutomony #DisabledPeople #ReproductiveAutonomy #Sterilization #Genocide -
#ForcedSterilization is a worldwide problem!
As #Japan starts compensation payments, #ForcedSterilisation continues around the world
#NonConsensual #sterilisation of those considered genetically inferior persists in some parts of the world today
by Ewan Bolton, 18 February 2025
"Just last week, in the Miyagi prefecture of Japan, the local governor met victims of an official eugenics policy to apologise for the suffering they underwent.
"'On behalf of the prefecture, I would like to offer my heartfelt apologies for the immense suffering caused to the 900 (victims),' said Murai Yoshihiro while lowering his head.
"For many, the words 'forced sterilisation' bring to mind #NaziGermany and the devastating #eugenic policies pursued by #fascist regimes in the 1930s and 1940s. But the non-consensual sterilisation of those considered genetically inferior continued through the 20th century and persists in some parts of the world today.
"In January, victims of Japan’s forced sterilisation programme were finally able to apply for compensation for the first time. Between 1948 and 1996, at least 16,500 people were forcibly sterilised in Japan under the country’s #EugenicProtectionLaw. Nearly 60,000 more underwent #abortions without, or with only dubious consent. Most were mentally handicapped people or those with hereditary diseases.
"As Japan finally addresses this legacy, victims of forced sterilisation in #Peru are still fighting for compensation after 370,000 people were sterilised in what the UN has described as a potential crime against humanity. And in the #UnitedStates, #India, #China and parts of #Europe, non-consensual sterilisations continue to this day.
"As with the Nazis, almost all cases can be traced back to the discredited #PseudoScience of eugenics which was developed in the #UK at around the turn of the last century and had many supporters, including #WinstonChurchill.
"Japan’s Eugenic Protection Law was introduced in the wake of World War II. It granted medical institutions the right to administer sterilisations and abortions without the consent of patients. Of the 25,000 people sterilised under the programme, according to government figures only 8,000 gave consent. The legitimacy of the consent in these cases is disputed.
"A large number of the victims were children, some as young as nine years old. In Miyagi prefecture, in the northwest of the main island, more than half of the 859 sterilised between 1963 and 1981 were under the age of 18.
"At a press conference last month in Hyogo prefecture, a #DeafWoman, now in her 80s, described the emotional pain of being given an abortion without her consent. 'I was taken to the hospital, and I thought I would be going to the general medicine department. I was very surprised because I was taken to the gynaecology department … I am unable to forget what happened at that time'.
"In her prefecture alone, there are '14 or 15 other [#DeafPeople] who suffered harm' that are known about, 'but there are undoubtedly more', said Yoshimichi Hongo, chairman of the Hyogo Prefecture Association for the Deaf."
Read more:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/women-and-girls/as-japan-starts-compensation-payments-forced-sterilisation/
#WorldPol #reproductiverights #Fascism #BodilyAutomony #DisabledPeople #ReproductiveAutonomy #Sterilization #Genocide -
#ForcedSterilization is a worldwide problem!
As #Japan starts compensation payments, #ForcedSterilisation continues around the world
#NonConsensual #sterilisation of those considered genetically inferior persists in some parts of the world today
by Ewan Bolton, 18 February 2025
"Just last week, in the Miyagi prefecture of Japan, the local governor met victims of an official eugenics policy to apologise for the suffering they underwent.
"'On behalf of the prefecture, I would like to offer my heartfelt apologies for the immense suffering caused to the 900 (victims),' said Murai Yoshihiro while lowering his head.
"For many, the words 'forced sterilisation' bring to mind #NaziGermany and the devastating #eugenic policies pursued by #fascist regimes in the 1930s and 1940s. But the non-consensual sterilisation of those considered genetically inferior continued through the 20th century and persists in some parts of the world today.
"In January, victims of Japan’s forced sterilisation programme were finally able to apply for compensation for the first time. Between 1948 and 1996, at least 16,500 people were forcibly sterilised in Japan under the country’s #EugenicProtectionLaw. Nearly 60,000 more underwent #abortions without, or with only dubious consent. Most were mentally handicapped people or those with hereditary diseases.
"As Japan finally addresses this legacy, victims of forced sterilisation in #Peru are still fighting for compensation after 370,000 people were sterilised in what the UN has described as a potential crime against humanity. And in the #UnitedStates, #India, #China and parts of #Europe, non-consensual sterilisations continue to this day.
"As with the Nazis, almost all cases can be traced back to the discredited #PseudoScience of eugenics which was developed in the #UK at around the turn of the last century and had many supporters, including #WinstonChurchill.
"Japan’s Eugenic Protection Law was introduced in the wake of World War II. It granted medical institutions the right to administer sterilisations and abortions without the consent of patients. Of the 25,000 people sterilised under the programme, according to government figures only 8,000 gave consent. The legitimacy of the consent in these cases is disputed.
"A large number of the victims were children, some as young as nine years old. In Miyagi prefecture, in the northwest of the main island, more than half of the 859 sterilised between 1963 and 1981 were under the age of 18.
"At a press conference last month in Hyogo prefecture, a #DeafWoman, now in her 80s, described the emotional pain of being given an abortion without her consent. 'I was taken to the hospital, and I thought I would be going to the general medicine department. I was very surprised because I was taken to the gynaecology department … I am unable to forget what happened at that time'.
"In her prefecture alone, there are '14 or 15 other [#DeafPeople] who suffered harm' that are known about, 'but there are undoubtedly more', said Yoshimichi Hongo, chairman of the Hyogo Prefecture Association for the Deaf."
Read more:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/women-and-girls/as-japan-starts-compensation-payments-forced-sterilisation/
#WorldPol #reproductiverights #Fascism #BodilyAutomony #DisabledPeople #ReproductiveAutonomy #Sterilization #Genocide -
#ForcedSterilization is a worldwide problem!
As #Japan starts compensation payments, #ForcedSterilisation continues around the world
#NonConsensual #sterilisation of those considered genetically inferior persists in some parts of the world today
by Ewan Bolton, 18 February 2025
"Just last week, in the Miyagi prefecture of Japan, the local governor met victims of an official eugenics policy to apologise for the suffering they underwent.
"'On behalf of the prefecture, I would like to offer my heartfelt apologies for the immense suffering caused to the 900 (victims),' said Murai Yoshihiro while lowering his head.
"For many, the words 'forced sterilisation' bring to mind #NaziGermany and the devastating #eugenic policies pursued by #fascist regimes in the 1930s and 1940s. But the non-consensual sterilisation of those considered genetically inferior continued through the 20th century and persists in some parts of the world today.
"In January, victims of Japan’s forced sterilisation programme were finally able to apply for compensation for the first time. Between 1948 and 1996, at least 16,500 people were forcibly sterilised in Japan under the country’s #EugenicProtectionLaw. Nearly 60,000 more underwent #abortions without, or with only dubious consent. Most were mentally handicapped people or those with hereditary diseases.
"As Japan finally addresses this legacy, victims of forced sterilisation in #Peru are still fighting for compensation after 370,000 people were sterilised in what the UN has described as a potential crime against humanity. And in the #UnitedStates, #India, #China and parts of #Europe, non-consensual sterilisations continue to this day.
"As with the Nazis, almost all cases can be traced back to the discredited #PseudoScience of eugenics which was developed in the #UK at around the turn of the last century and had many supporters, including #WinstonChurchill.
"Japan’s Eugenic Protection Law was introduced in the wake of World War II. It granted medical institutions the right to administer sterilisations and abortions without the consent of patients. Of the 25,000 people sterilised under the programme, according to government figures only 8,000 gave consent. The legitimacy of the consent in these cases is disputed.
"A large number of the victims were children, some as young as nine years old. In Miyagi prefecture, in the northwest of the main island, more than half of the 859 sterilised between 1963 and 1981 were under the age of 18.
"At a press conference last month in Hyogo prefecture, a #DeafWoman, now in her 80s, described the emotional pain of being given an abortion without her consent. 'I was taken to the hospital, and I thought I would be going to the general medicine department. I was very surprised because I was taken to the gynaecology department … I am unable to forget what happened at that time'.
"In her prefecture alone, there are '14 or 15 other [#DeafPeople] who suffered harm' that are known about, 'but there are undoubtedly more', said Yoshimichi Hongo, chairman of the Hyogo Prefecture Association for the Deaf."
Read more:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/women-and-girls/as-japan-starts-compensation-payments-forced-sterilisation/
#WorldPol #reproductiverights #Fascism #BodilyAutomony #DisabledPeople #ReproductiveAutonomy #Sterilization #Genocide -
#ForcedSterilization is a worldwide problem!
As #Japan starts compensation payments, #ForcedSterilisation continues around the world
#NonConsensual #sterilisation of those considered genetically inferior persists in some parts of the world today
by Ewan Bolton, 18 February 2025
"Just last week, in the Miyagi prefecture of Japan, the local governor met victims of an official eugenics policy to apologise for the suffering they underwent.
"'On behalf of the prefecture, I would like to offer my heartfelt apologies for the immense suffering caused to the 900 (victims),' said Murai Yoshihiro while lowering his head.
"For many, the words 'forced sterilisation' bring to mind #NaziGermany and the devastating #eugenic policies pursued by #fascist regimes in the 1930s and 1940s. But the non-consensual sterilisation of those considered genetically inferior continued through the 20th century and persists in some parts of the world today.
"In January, victims of Japan’s forced sterilisation programme were finally able to apply for compensation for the first time. Between 1948 and 1996, at least 16,500 people were forcibly sterilised in Japan under the country’s #EugenicProtectionLaw. Nearly 60,000 more underwent #abortions without, or with only dubious consent. Most were mentally handicapped people or those with hereditary diseases.
"As Japan finally addresses this legacy, victims of forced sterilisation in #Peru are still fighting for compensation after 370,000 people were sterilised in what the UN has described as a potential crime against humanity. And in the #UnitedStates, #India, #China and parts of #Europe, non-consensual sterilisations continue to this day.
"As with the Nazis, almost all cases can be traced back to the discredited #PseudoScience of eugenics which was developed in the #UK at around the turn of the last century and had many supporters, including #WinstonChurchill.
"Japan’s Eugenic Protection Law was introduced in the wake of World War II. It granted medical institutions the right to administer sterilisations and abortions without the consent of patients. Of the 25,000 people sterilised under the programme, according to government figures only 8,000 gave consent. The legitimacy of the consent in these cases is disputed.
"A large number of the victims were children, some as young as nine years old. In Miyagi prefecture, in the northwest of the main island, more than half of the 859 sterilised between 1963 and 1981 were under the age of 18.
"At a press conference last month in Hyogo prefecture, a #DeafWoman, now in her 80s, described the emotional pain of being given an abortion without her consent. 'I was taken to the hospital, and I thought I would be going to the general medicine department. I was very surprised because I was taken to the gynaecology department … I am unable to forget what happened at that time'.
"In her prefecture alone, there are '14 or 15 other [#DeafPeople] who suffered harm' that are known about, 'but there are undoubtedly more', said Yoshimichi Hongo, chairman of the Hyogo Prefecture Association for the Deaf."
Read more:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/women-and-girls/as-japan-starts-compensation-payments-forced-sterilisation/
#WorldPol #reproductiverights #Fascism #BodilyAutomony #DisabledPeople #ReproductiveAutonomy #Sterilization #Genocide -
#ForcedSterilization of #DisabledPeople Isn’t a Relic of the Past
In a majority of states, #eugenics-era laws still let doctors sterilize disabled patients against their will.
by Julia Métraux
February 27, 2025"'In order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence,' Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote for the majority in 1927’s Buck v. Bell, the state could—and should—'prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.' Forced sterilization, the court held, was not only legal but laudable.
"In 1924, 17-year-old Carrie Buck was institutionalized, having been deemed 'feebleminded' on the grounds of 'promiscuous' behavior. In reality, Buck was raped by her foster family’s nephew. Three years later, with the Court’s blessing, Virginia’s 'State Colony of Epileptics and Feeble Minded' sterilized Buck against her will. The decision, passed at the height of the 20th-century eugenics movement, has never been overturned.
"'There’s a very different standard being applied to disabled people’s autonomy.'
"To this day, 31 states and #WashingtonDC, still have laws on the books that allow for the practice—and just two, #Alaska and #NorthCarolina, have laws that fully ban the #nonconsensual #sterilization of disabled people, according to a 2022 report from the National Women’s Law Center. There’s no official account of just how many disabled people have been sterilized under those laws.
"Some of these laws aren’t even that old. In 2019, #Iowa and #Nevada passed new forced sterilization laws that applied to people under #guardianship. Both bills passed unanimously, and the end result is consistent with laws on the books in other states. There was no discourse among politicians—let alone objections—about the ethics of sterilizing disabled people without their consent.
"Sterilization and Social Justice Lab co-director and founder Alexandra Minna Stern said that early IQ tests, which sought to measure intelligence in part on the basis of class- and culture-based questions involving Beethoven’s sonatas, the early United States, and college athletics, were 'used to categorize people who would then be targeted for sterilization,' generally those who were '#marginalized or maligned in some way': in #California and the #Southwest, often #MexicanAmericans; nationwide, #Black, #Indigenous and #poorer white Americans, particularly women. The people behind the tests, Stern says, were 'white, #elite men who wanted to create a certain type of society in their own image.'
"NWLC senior counsel for health equity and justice Ma’ayan Anafi, who is also disabled, told Mother Jones that “forced sterilization laws are a really powerful example of how violations of disabled people’s bodies and rights are baked into our legal system today.”
Read more:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/forced-sterilization-eugenics-scotus-state-laws/
#USPol #reproductiverights #Fascism #BodilyAutomony -
#ForcedSterilization of #DisabledPeople Isn’t a Relic of the Past
In a majority of states, #eugenics-era laws still let doctors sterilize disabled patients against their will.
by Julia Métraux
February 27, 2025"'In order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence,' Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote for the majority in 1927’s Buck v. Bell, the state could—and should—'prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.' Forced sterilization, the court held, was not only legal but laudable.
"In 1924, 17-year-old Carrie Buck was institutionalized, having been deemed 'feebleminded' on the grounds of 'promiscuous' behavior. In reality, Buck was raped by her foster family’s nephew. Three years later, with the Court’s blessing, Virginia’s 'State Colony of Epileptics and Feeble Minded' sterilized Buck against her will. The decision, passed at the height of the 20th-century eugenics movement, has never been overturned.
"'There’s a very different standard being applied to disabled people’s autonomy.'
"To this day, 31 states and #WashingtonDC, still have laws on the books that allow for the practice—and just two, #Alaska and #NorthCarolina, have laws that fully ban the #nonconsensual #sterilization of disabled people, according to a 2022 report from the National Women’s Law Center. There’s no official account of just how many disabled people have been sterilized under those laws.
"Some of these laws aren’t even that old. In 2019, #Iowa and #Nevada passed new forced sterilization laws that applied to people under #guardianship. Both bills passed unanimously, and the end result is consistent with laws on the books in other states. There was no discourse among politicians—let alone objections—about the ethics of sterilizing disabled people without their consent.
"Sterilization and Social Justice Lab co-director and founder Alexandra Minna Stern said that early IQ tests, which sought to measure intelligence in part on the basis of class- and culture-based questions involving Beethoven’s sonatas, the early United States, and college athletics, were 'used to categorize people who would then be targeted for sterilization,' generally those who were '#marginalized or maligned in some way': in #California and the #Southwest, often #MexicanAmericans; nationwide, #Black, #Indigenous and #poorer white Americans, particularly women. The people behind the tests, Stern says, were 'white, #elite men who wanted to create a certain type of society in their own image.'
"NWLC senior counsel for health equity and justice Ma’ayan Anafi, who is also disabled, told Mother Jones that “forced sterilization laws are a really powerful example of how violations of disabled people’s bodies and rights are baked into our legal system today.”
Read more:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/forced-sterilization-eugenics-scotus-state-laws/
#USPol #reproductiverights #Fascism #BodilyAutomony -
#ForcedSterilization of #DisabledPeople Isn’t a Relic of the Past
In a majority of states, #eugenics-era laws still let doctors sterilize disabled patients against their will.
by Julia Métraux
February 27, 2025"'In order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence,' Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote for the majority in 1927’s Buck v. Bell, the state could—and should—'prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.' Forced sterilization, the court held, was not only legal but laudable.
"In 1924, 17-year-old Carrie Buck was institutionalized, having been deemed 'feebleminded' on the grounds of 'promiscuous' behavior. In reality, Buck was raped by her foster family’s nephew. Three years later, with the Court’s blessing, Virginia’s 'State Colony of Epileptics and Feeble Minded' sterilized Buck against her will. The decision, passed at the height of the 20th-century eugenics movement, has never been overturned.
"'There’s a very different standard being applied to disabled people’s autonomy.'
"To this day, 31 states and #WashingtonDC, still have laws on the books that allow for the practice—and just two, #Alaska and #NorthCarolina, have laws that fully ban the #nonconsensual #sterilization of disabled people, according to a 2022 report from the National Women’s Law Center. There’s no official account of just how many disabled people have been sterilized under those laws.
"Some of these laws aren’t even that old. In 2019, #Iowa and #Nevada passed new forced sterilization laws that applied to people under #guardianship. Both bills passed unanimously, and the end result is consistent with laws on the books in other states. There was no discourse among politicians—let alone objections—about the ethics of sterilizing disabled people without their consent.
"Sterilization and Social Justice Lab co-director and founder Alexandra Minna Stern said that early IQ tests, which sought to measure intelligence in part on the basis of class- and culture-based questions involving Beethoven’s sonatas, the early United States, and college athletics, were 'used to categorize people who would then be targeted for sterilization,' generally those who were '#marginalized or maligned in some way': in #California and the #Southwest, often #MexicanAmericans; nationwide, #Black, #Indigenous and #poorer white Americans, particularly women. The people behind the tests, Stern says, were 'white, #elite men who wanted to create a certain type of society in their own image.'
"NWLC senior counsel for health equity and justice Ma’ayan Anafi, who is also disabled, told Mother Jones that “forced sterilization laws are a really powerful example of how violations of disabled people’s bodies and rights are baked into our legal system today.”
Read more:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/forced-sterilization-eugenics-scotus-state-laws/
#USPol #reproductiverights #Fascism #BodilyAutomony -
#ForcedSterilization of #DisabledPeople Isn’t a Relic of the Past
In a majority of states, #eugenics-era laws still let doctors sterilize disabled patients against their will.
by Julia Métraux
February 27, 2025"'In order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence,' Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote for the majority in 1927’s Buck v. Bell, the state could—and should—'prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.' Forced sterilization, the court held, was not only legal but laudable.
"In 1924, 17-year-old Carrie Buck was institutionalized, having been deemed 'feebleminded' on the grounds of 'promiscuous' behavior. In reality, Buck was raped by her foster family’s nephew. Three years later, with the Court’s blessing, Virginia’s 'State Colony of Epileptics and Feeble Minded' sterilized Buck against her will. The decision, passed at the height of the 20th-century eugenics movement, has never been overturned.
"'There’s a very different standard being applied to disabled people’s autonomy.'
"To this day, 31 states and #WashingtonDC, still have laws on the books that allow for the practice—and just two, #Alaska and #NorthCarolina, have laws that fully ban the #nonconsensual #sterilization of disabled people, according to a 2022 report from the National Women’s Law Center. There’s no official account of just how many disabled people have been sterilized under those laws.
"Some of these laws aren’t even that old. In 2019, #Iowa and #Nevada passed new forced sterilization laws that applied to people under #guardianship. Both bills passed unanimously, and the end result is consistent with laws on the books in other states. There was no discourse among politicians—let alone objections—about the ethics of sterilizing disabled people without their consent.
"Sterilization and Social Justice Lab co-director and founder Alexandra Minna Stern said that early IQ tests, which sought to measure intelligence in part on the basis of class- and culture-based questions involving Beethoven’s sonatas, the early United States, and college athletics, were 'used to categorize people who would then be targeted for sterilization,' generally those who were '#marginalized or maligned in some way': in #California and the #Southwest, often #MexicanAmericans; nationwide, #Black, #Indigenous and #poorer white Americans, particularly women. The people behind the tests, Stern says, were 'white, #elite men who wanted to create a certain type of society in their own image.'
"NWLC senior counsel for health equity and justice Ma’ayan Anafi, who is also disabled, told Mother Jones that “forced sterilization laws are a really powerful example of how violations of disabled people’s bodies and rights are baked into our legal system today.”
Read more:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/forced-sterilization-eugenics-scotus-state-laws/
#USPol #reproductiverights #Fascism #BodilyAutomony -
#ForcedSterilization of #DisabledPeople Isn’t a Relic of the Past
In a majority of states, #eugenics-era laws still let doctors sterilize disabled patients against their will.
by Julia Métraux
February 27, 2025"'In order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence,' Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote for the majority in 1927’s Buck v. Bell, the state could—and should—'prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.' Forced sterilization, the court held, was not only legal but laudable.
"In 1924, 17-year-old Carrie Buck was institutionalized, having been deemed 'feebleminded' on the grounds of 'promiscuous' behavior. In reality, Buck was raped by her foster family’s nephew. Three years later, with the Court’s blessing, Virginia’s 'State Colony of Epileptics and Feeble Minded' sterilized Buck against her will. The decision, passed at the height of the 20th-century eugenics movement, has never been overturned.
"'There’s a very different standard being applied to disabled people’s autonomy.'
"To this day, 31 states and #WashingtonDC, still have laws on the books that allow for the practice—and just two, #Alaska and #NorthCarolina, have laws that fully ban the #nonconsensual #sterilization of disabled people, according to a 2022 report from the National Women’s Law Center. There’s no official account of just how many disabled people have been sterilized under those laws.
"Some of these laws aren’t even that old. In 2019, #Iowa and #Nevada passed new forced sterilization laws that applied to people under #guardianship. Both bills passed unanimously, and the end result is consistent with laws on the books in other states. There was no discourse among politicians—let alone objections—about the ethics of sterilizing disabled people without their consent.
"Sterilization and Social Justice Lab co-director and founder Alexandra Minna Stern said that early IQ tests, which sought to measure intelligence in part on the basis of class- and culture-based questions involving Beethoven’s sonatas, the early United States, and college athletics, were 'used to categorize people who would then be targeted for sterilization,' generally those who were '#marginalized or maligned in some way': in #California and the #Southwest, often #MexicanAmericans; nationwide, #Black, #Indigenous and #poorer white Americans, particularly women. The people behind the tests, Stern says, were 'white, #elite men who wanted to create a certain type of society in their own image.'
"NWLC senior counsel for health equity and justice Ma’ayan Anafi, who is also disabled, told Mother Jones that “forced sterilization laws are a really powerful example of how violations of disabled people’s bodies and rights are baked into our legal system today.”
Read more:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/forced-sterilization-eugenics-scotus-state-laws/
#USPol #reproductiverights #Fascism #BodilyAutomony -
Nice initiative for eldery or disabled people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBdzFrkw31I
#bicycle #bicycling #cycling #eldery #disabledpeople #mobilityforall #utrecht
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CW: re: US politics, fascism, fear, hope
After the #USPresidentialElection, this is what I wrote--I created a list of "What I know right now" as a way for myself to track both my own personal, moral compass and the likely eroding norms of the United States. It seems relevant to #USpol right now as well. Here is what I know:
1.) #PeopleWithDisabilities are inherently worthy as human beings. They deserve care and protection. How we treat #DisabledPeople determines how we treat all of society. (And yes, that means #CovidIsNotOver and you should #WearAMask.)
#Covid19 #Pandemic #covid #DisabilityJustice #DisabilityRights #Fasicsm #USPolitics #Leftism #Hope #compassion #justice
-
On International Day of #People with #Disabilities, please note some disabilities are #invisible
#invisibleillness #disabled #disabledpeople #DisabilityRights #DisabilityRightsAreHumanRights
#IDPD #IDPD2024 #IDPD24 #IDPWD #IDPWD24 #IDPWD2024 #Disability @chronicillness
@spoonies
@disability
@mecfs @longcovid
#LongCovid #MEcfs #CFS #PwME -
On International Day of #People with #Disabilities, please note some disabilities are #invisible
#invisibleillness #disabled #disabledpeople #DisabilityRights #DisabilityRightsAreHumanRights
#IDPD #IDPD2024 #IDPD24 #IDPWD #IDPWD24 #IDPWD2024 #Disability @chronicillness
@spoonies
@disability
@mecfs @longcovid
#LongCovid #MEcfs #CFS #PwME -
On International Day of #People with #Disabilities, please note some disabilities are #invisible
#invisibleillness #disabled #disabledpeople #DisabilityRights #DisabilityRightsAreHumanRights
#IDPD #IDPD2024 #IDPD24 #IDPWD #IDPWD24 #IDPWD2024 #Disability @chronicillness
@spoonies
@disability
@mecfs @longcovid
#LongCovid #MEcfs #CFS #PwME -
On International Day of #People with #Disabilities, please note some disabilities are #invisible
#invisibleillness #disabled #disabledpeople #DisabilityRights #DisabilityRightsAreHumanRights
#IDPD #IDPD2024 #IDPD24 #IDPWD #IDPWD24 #IDPWD2024 #Disability @chronicillness
@spoonies
@disability
@mecfs @longcovid
#LongCovid #MEcfs #CFS #PwME -
On International Day of #People with #Disabilities, please note some disabilities are #invisible
#invisibleillness #disabled #disabledpeople #DisabilityRights #DisabilityRightsAreHumanRights
#IDPD #IDPD2024 #IDPD24 #IDPWD #IDPWD24 #IDPWD2024 #Disability @chronicillness
@spoonies
@disability
@mecfs @longcovid
#LongCovid #MEcfs #CFS #PwME -
Shellshocked, attacked, left to die – this is the reality for #DisabledPeople in #Gaza.
When evacuation orders were issued in the north, initially in October last year, many #PeopleWithDisabilities could not flee – and their families refused to leave them behind. Those who could escape were packed like luggage into cars, carts or minibuses. Assistance devices, such as wheelchairs, canes, crutches and medical equipment often had to be left behind. Hearing aids, eyeglasses, adaptive toilet seats and incontinence pads were destroyed or lost.
Most #AssistiveDevices are not being included in the minimal #HumanitarianAid coming into Gaza. The Israelis have declared certain spare parts and batteries for these devices dangerous, so-called dual use items – saying they could be used for military purposes. Without wheelchairs, canes, walkers, splints and prosthetics, people with disabilities are struggling to survive, left isolated, with no independence or sense of autonomy or dignity. There is no liquid food or #DisabilityInclusive feeding equipment, like feeding tubes or adaptive utensils. The #psychological torture of feeling like a burden is #unbearable and #degrading.
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/19/disabled-people-gaza-cerebral-palsy
#FreePalestine #StopGenocide #OccupationIsNotFreedom #FreeGaza #IsraelWarCrimes #IsraelIsATerroristState #ICC #Apartheid #HumanRights #PalestinianLivesMatter #ArmsEmbargoOnIsrael #BoycottIsrael #BDSMovement #BoycottIsraeliApartheid #DefundIsrael #OstracizeIsrael #SocialJustice #Humanitarian #DisabilityJustice
-
My friend sent a text, and he...is...cross as fuck!😡
Let me tell able-bodied people what a #disabledqueer :heart_pan: :anqueer_flag: friend of mine told me, after his last shopping trip.
#DisabledPeople are capable of thinking and doing for themselves. If they need our help, they will ask for it.
It is ableist to assume that anyone walking with a cane and wearing a mask is elderly, (when, in this case, this man is 29 years old and disabled after a #gaybashing).
Whether someone is elderly or a young disabled person or an elderly disabled person, don't create a narrative about who and what they are.
Do not assume they are 'feeble'.
Don't speak in a condescending tone. They are not children!
How DARE anyone wince at the sight of a physically disabled person.
-
Much of the difficulty people face when #dating with a #disability is overcoming these #stereotypes. Some non-disabled people known as “devotees” have a specific #DisabilityFetish in which they #hypersexualize and #objectify #PeopleWithDisabilities, which can be frustrating and minimizing.
As if that isn’t enough to worry about, many multiply #marginalized #DisabledPeople experience additional #fetishization and harmful behaviors from their potential dates.
-
*I've had some horrific lived experiences with both folks who have #DisabilityFetish & folks who were only interested in me as a #DisabledWoman dating experiment - without telling me, I'm an experiment. Both types of these experiences harmed me & are abusive & exploitive.*
When we talk about #DisabledPeople having awesome sex lives, sometimes something #dehumanizing creeps into the mix: Some (usually nondisabled) people profess an "attraction to disability."
-
'The treatment of #ChronicallyIll and #DisabledPeople by welfare officials, including #benefits decisions subsequently linked to the deaths of vulnerable claimants, is to be formally investigated by #Britain’s #HumanRights watchdog.
#EqualityAndHumanRightsCommission (#EHRC) said it would examine whether ministers at the #DepartmentForWorkAndPensions (#DWP) had acted #unlawfully by failing to protect claimants with #LearningDisabilities or severe #MentalIllness
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/may/22/inquiry-to-begin-into-dwps-treatment-of-ill-and-disabled-people-on-benefits -
#UK 'no longer a #leader in #disabilityrights' as #UN finds #Tory #policy has led to '#hate'
Following a #UN #committee warning that the #government has '#undermined' the #rights of #disabledpeople, #charities #callforchange
#Women #Transgender #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #UK #Tories #TERFS #Hate #Bigotry #Violence #Genocide #Discrimination #Ableism #Homophobia #Transphobia #MoralPanic #HateSpeech #StochasticTerrorism #Hatecrimes
https://www.bigissue.com/news/social-justice/uk-disability-rights-un-uncrpd/
-
"An #ESRI survey of 2,000 adults showed higher levels of #ableism towards #MentalHealth conditions, #Intellectualdisabilities #ID and #autism than physical or sensory disabilities...
While they judged potential #prejudice against #DisabledPeople as unacceptable, they viewed it as more acceptable, for example, to reduce the school hours of a child with #autism than a child with a speech and language disorder."
#discrimination #autistic #Irelandhttps://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2024/0123/1428035-esri-report-ableism/
