The importance of disabilty support workers

I attended a study tour to Hawaii with Peter early this year. I learnt so much from this experience and I have also attained many valuable attributes from the experience. It gave me the opportunity to work in Hawaii, and allowed me to gain the organisational skills to get him there and help him pursue his dreams. The trip took an entire year to plan, as there were so many obstacles to work through, but when I saw Peter's determination to get there and really enjoying it, this became a vehicle for change that drove me.

Attending conferences and forums with Peter empowered me; I wanted to learn so much more about the disability sector. I was a successful recipient of a Department of Human Services Scholarship to further my studies in disability work. I am a second year student and with the assistance of Peter’s mentoring skills I expect to complete this and further my career within the disability sector.

In the next section, the paper will discuss the opinions of two highly intelligent people, from the USA, with severe disabilities and looks at the issue of how support workers are undervalued by many in society.

Related pitfalls in an American context

Dr Don Parsons is an outstanding independent scholar and author who was diagnosed with Friedreich’s Ataxia in 1971, and despite this graduated with a PhD in 1985, from the University of California in Los Angeles.

From his sufferance, and his knowledge of the progression of Friedreich’s Ataxia, he is clearly entitled to the respect he has earned for his scholarly and pragmatic views about the political economy of support workers.

Dr Parsons practically and scholastically believes that the ability of a person to effectively communicate and interact with their support worker is of the utmost importance. The disability system of support is focused on the wage relationship so a support worker should, in theory, provide the minimum of personal care and maintenance. All else is, he believes, due to the relationship that the disabled person can develop with his or her support worker.

There are also certain constraints, usually in terms of time, that appear to be inherent in the system. For example, if a person in need of support wants to attend some conferences they may be unable to do so because he or she is unable to vary the established hours of work by the support worker to a sufficient degree.

Now we acknowledge the thoughts of Professor Yvonne Singer concerning support workers. She has suffered with Cerebral Palsy since birth, leaving her severely physically disabled. Despite this she is currently an online professor at two universities in the US.

Professor Singer pragmatically justifies the reasons for a shortage of support workers in America. She believes one of these is that the actions of a support worker are not given any value in society. Many in society, therefore, do not value the disabled and equally do not value actions which help the disabled achieve.

This is only further exacerbated by poor training methods, low salary and no benefits. Singer also commented on the poor work ethic of support workers within the disability industry, due in many ways to budgetary cuts and the flow on effects of poor administration.

Australia benchmarks a sizeable portion of its disability policy from the US, whether it pragmatically works or not. Now in this paper we would like to leave you with something to think about. The question remains: are disability support workers as undervalued in Australia as their colleagues are in the US?