Dr Kathomi Gatwiri The central tenet of this unit is to promote
social inclusion, and our understanding of it. But it is always interesting sometimes
when you ask people about, when you ask people about connection, most of the time they tell
you about disconnection? When you ask people about inclusion, sometimes they will tell
you the most excruciating stories about exclusion. And it is our duty, as social welfare workers,
or as social workers, to be able to understand what, how we participate in the discourse
of exclusion, how is it that everybody thinks that they are inclusive, but then people on
the margins always have experiences of exclusion. I mean, where is that disconnect?
So I am inviting you to listen to these stories today that will give you and idea of what
it means to live at the margins of society, how it means to be excluded. And I’m sure
most of us have the experience of not truly ever belonging in a space, and how excruciating
that can be for someone, to really not have a sense of home, to not really have a sense
of, you know, belonging, because you’re existing at the margin of our society, you
know, at every minute of your life. So, listen to these stories, but also reflect on your
own attitudes, and reflect on your own language, and ask yourself ‘Am I inclusive enough?’.
Nate Quinell When I enter the community, a lot of the time,
I go out with a support worker, who I get through the NDIS, and due to having them,
being able to help me around, I feel like I am included. But if I was to walk out there
by myself, with my guide dog, I think I’d probably get lost. So, in a way, a few people
include me in the community, and say ‘oh, are you right? Do you know where you are going?’
things like that. But in other stages, like, other circumstances, people walk up and they
won’t even hop out of your way. Like, if I-, I can basically walk into someone, and
they’re like ‘oh, oh, you right?’, like that, like, I just think they could have a
better opinion, a better view towards someone with a disability, if they’re having difficulty,
once again challenges, in the community. And, to become included, I think, once again,
a lot more work would need to be undergone within community, areas, maybe more education
to community members on people with disabilities, the right way to approach them, if you see
them in the public area. Maybe hop out of their way, if they’re coming towards you,
unless they’re trying to ask you something. And if they ask you something, as I’ve had
at times, I thought someone was standing in front of me, and I’d be talking, and no
one’s there. I think to myself ‘Gee, people probably think I’m mental, because I’m
standing here talking to no one’, and there’s no one in front of me. But people can stand
in front of you, and then they walk away, and you think you’re talking to them. So,
in a way, partly, maybe 50-50 inclusion rate. Dr Kathomi Gatwiri
Do you feel included in community? Una Cowdroy
Yeah, I do. Maybe more so now that I’m older, and I can accept more, than I used to when
I was a child. I found it very hard accepting my disability as I was growing up, because,
being the youngest of eight children, all my sisters went out with their boyfriends,
and I’d be stuck home, and, you know, that really got to me, because I just couldn’t
do what they were doing. But, as I got older, I accepted more. So, that’s, that’s the
way I feel now. Dr Kathomi Gatwiri
And when you say you fell included in community, what kind of things make you feel included,
for example? Una Cowdroy
Oh, Well, for instance, when I, uh, used to work, we’d go out occasionally, and they’d
always go somewhere where it was accessible for me, because they knew that I had difficulty
with stairs, or the bathroom, or things like that, and I felt really good, because they
included me in what they wanted to do. You know, yes, there were places where they, they’d
go sometimes and I’d say, no, well you go there, I don’t mind, and they would go not
very often, and they always included me, so that I could go to the places that they went
to. I felt as if I was, you know, accepted in their world, and, you know, in their workplace
as well. Suzy Hudson
I do. But that’s because I am now an older lady, and I own myself, if that makes sense?
I will ring up the taxis, for instance, and I’ll say ‘it’s Suzy the blind lady in
South Tweed’, I don’t have a problem with identifying as the blind lady. But when I
was younger, it was embarrassing, so I didn’t-, you know, I wouldn’t do that. Now, this
is me, this is who I am. The majority of people, now, will come up to me, if I’m out, and
tap me on the shoulder, and say ‘Hi it’s so-and-so’, where, before, I didn’t get
that. It feels great, to be included, to have that
inclusion, I’ve, you know, over the years I’ve said to people, if you see me and I’m
out, then obviously if I haven’t spoken to you, it’s because I haven’t seen you,
just come up and say hi. And, now people are comfortable to do that. I think, people are
also uncomfortable about other people’s disabilities. I think they just feel embarrassed
for the person, or embarrassed because they might look a little bit longer than somebody
that’s not got a disability, you know, standing next to them, if you like. You know, I know
kids, kids are great, because kids don’t have filters, kids will ask, you know, like
‘mum, mum, why has that lady got the dog in the shop?’, and it’s the parents that
have the issues with answering the questions, not the kids. I love kids, I’ll tell them
straight out ‘it’s because my eyes are broken, they don’t work like yours’, you
know. And they’re happy, they’ve got an answer. Where, if you don’t answer them,
it has happened, the child just gets louder and louder, while mum pushes the trolley and
ignores the child, and eventually she has to say something, and she’ll say ‘Shhh!
Shh! Shh!’, you know? Una Cowdroy
I think the parents don’t educate their children properly. Well, when I say that,
they-, if you’re in a shopping centre, and the kids turn around and have a look—which
is only natural, because they want to know, you know, what happened to me, or whatever—instead
of turning around and saying to them, to the boy or girl, ‘Oh, she’s, you know, she
can’t use her legs, you know, she has to use a wheelchair’ similarly to that, so
that they can understand that I’m not a creature of, you know, being in a wheelchair,
I’m a normal person. So, I just think that they should get educated a bit more, so that
they don’t get dragged away. You know I’ve seen it so many times, mothers ‘Oh, come
on, you don’t want to look at that’, you know? And it makes me feel bad. I always say
hello to them, the children, because they if look at me, I just say ‘hello, how are
you?’, and that sort of stops them from staring, or, or asking weird questions to
their mum. It just makes me feel uncomfortable. It makes
me feel as if I’ve got something on, that I shouldn’t have on, or, you know, just,
something that I should be doing that I’m not doing.
Suzy Hudson I work with adults with intellectual disabilities,
and sometimes when we take them out in social occasions, some people—it’s not happening
as much as it used to—but some people will actually move away. They don’t want to acknowledge
the person, there, with the disability. The majority of people are very kind, and they
don’t have a problem with it. But, just-, and that’s why I think it’s really important
to get through to the younger ones, that that person is okay.
P. Aplet The things that make me feel included, I guess,
is when I can get into places, or, even if I can’t get into a place, having a conversation
with someone, and asking them possibly, if they could either put a ramp in, or um-, and
seeing a positive response to something like that. Like, a request I might make, or an
enquiry, and not letting it stop, I’ve learnt to push a bit further than letting it stop
with just the why is it this way? Why can I not get out of the Centrelink bathrooms
by myself, because they’ve got a fireproof door on them? You know, it’s like, this
is a new building, how did it ever come to be that it was made this way? Those kinds
of enquiries, not stopping at the front line of someone who says ‘oh, that’s just,
ah, that’s a legal thing, legal requirement’, and then asking them to peruse it further,
and say there’s been a complaint made. And then going back and saying ‘what was the
outcome of that complaint?’, and following it through so there’s some action. Or I
just become so annoying they want to get me out of their face, and do something about
it. I feel really dis-cluded when I go into a
shop, and the aisles are wide enough for my chair, and I get all excited, and then I get
down to the second isle, and it’s got all these extra space-grabbing turny things on
the end of it, which I can completely destruct in one swoop, by accident, and not get down
the aisles, because you’re all bunged up with things on the floor or things stacked
around to claim every extra little piece of space. I’ve had extremes of people, who
are very inclusive, and make me feel like it’s a seamless integration, because of
their response to how I am, in a chair, etcetera. And then I’ve had, right down the spectrum,
to people looking at me like the brain doesn’t work because I’m sitting in a wheelchair.
So, a lot of people speak to me very loudly, like I’m deaf, for some reason, because
I’m in a wheelchair, they yell at me. There’s a really lovely story I like to
share, with this one chap, he’s a taxi driver in the town, and he would pick me up on different
occasions, and take me places. So I had a bit of rapport with him, but not a lot, and
one time I’m going across the crossing in my chair, and he just happens to stop at the
crossing, he winds down the window, and he’s got some other passenger with him, he hoots
out the window, ‘Oh Hurry up will you?’ [laughs]. And you know what, I felt so included,
I felt so part of it, it just normalised Yeah, and he was just-, and the guy next to
him was, didn’t know where to look. He was just like, ‘oh, did he really just say that?!’
[laughs] ‘To a person in a wheelchair?! How do you say that?’ and I just cracked
up laughing, and gave the biggest wave, but it made my day. And whenever I think about
it, I feel so, it was a comforting moment. And that sounds weird, because it was someone
having a dig, but it was funny.