Tag Archives: Culture

Differences between Aspergers and Autism -‘fruit salads’?

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In one of my books, The Jumbled Jigsaw, I presented a range of conditions commonly collectively occurring in those with autism and Aspergers. I was asked about the differences between an Aspergers (AS) ‘fruit salad’ and an Autism ‘fruit salad’. As an autism consultant since 1996 and having worked with over 1000 people diagnosed on the autism spectrum there are areas that overlap, areas where similar can easily be mistaken for same, and areas that are commonly quite different. Some with AS can present far more autistically in childhood but function very successfully in adulthood. Some with Autism can have abilities and tendencies commonly found in Aspies and some will grow up to function far more successfully than they could in childhood but, nevertheless, when together with adults with Aspergers they each notice that the differences may commonly outweigh the similarities. Generally the more common differences are:

ASPERGERS
Originally called ‘Autistic Psychopathy‘(now outdated)
commonly not diagnosed until mid, even late childhood.
lesser degrees of gut, immune, metabolic disorders, epilepsy and genetic anomalies impacting health systems
dyspraxia
mood, anxiety, compulsive disorders commonly onset from late childhood/teens/early adulthood as a result of bullying, secondary to social skills problems, secondary to progressive self isolation and lack of interpersonal challenge/involvement/occupation.
scotopic sensitivity/light sensitivity more than simultagnosia
most have social emotional agnosia & around 30% have faceblindness but usually not due to simultagnosia
literal but not meaning deaf
social communication impairments, sometimes selective mutism secondary to Avoidant Personality Disorder (AvPD)
sensory hypersensitivities more than sensory perceptual disorders
higher IQ scores due to less impaired visual-verbal processing
tendency toward Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD), Schizoid rather than Schizotypal Personality Disorder and commonly Dependent Personality Disorder to some level.
higher tendency to AvPD rather than Exposure Anxiety
Alexithymia is common
ADHD common co-occurance but may be less marked than in those with autism.

AUTISM
Once known as Childhood Psychosis (now outdated)
generally there is always some diagnosis before age 3 (those born before 1980 were still usually diagnosed before age 3, although commonly with now outdated terms like ‘psychotic children’, ‘disturbed’, ‘mentally retarded’, ‘brain damaged’.
higher degrees and severity of gut, immune, metabolic disorders, epilepsy and genetic anomalies impacting health systems
mood, anxiety, compulsive disorders commonly observed since infancy
commonly amazing balance but commonly hypotonia
simultagnosia/meaning blindness rather than just scotopic sensitivity
verbal agnosia/meaning deafness
verbal communication impairments (aphasia, oral dyspraxia, verbal agnosia and associated echolalia and commonly secondary Selective Mutism)
lower IQ scores associated with higher severity of LD/Dyslexia/agnosias
tendency toward OCD/Tourette’s, also higher rate of Schizotypal PD, DPD is common and tends to be more severe
higher tendency to Exposure Anxiety more than AvPD
higher tendency toward dissociative states (dissociation, derealisation, depersonalization)
poetry by those with autism as opposed to AS commonly indicates those with autism can have high levels of introspection, insight
ADHD extremely common co-occurrence

This post is from Donna Williams’ Blog

Congratulations on making it this far down the post.

Okay so now here’s my bit.

It’s question and answer time for you all once again because as we all know, inquiring minds simply always want to know more.

So apart from Donna’s list, what do you think are the key differences between Asperger’s Syndrome and Autism?

Do you think they’re aren’t any major differences at all?

Or do you think there are many?

Are you in favor of doing away with the term Asperger’s Syndrome and replacing it with  High Functioning Autism instead?

Do you think mixing the two, up until now, distinctly different ways of  understanding the needs of those on the Autism spectrum will help or hinder public awareness and understandings of Autism?

Would love to hear  your views on this.

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Fracturing the time, space, continuum while watching TV shows

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Not to mention that you’ve  probably engaged in some form of invisible particle piracy.

And  you’ve quite likely  fractured the time, space, continuum by doing so.

TV is just not meant to watched this way.

Isn’t i it?

What would River say???????

Okay, Okay, I admit it,

I am TV show junkie.
I just can’t seem to help it.
Well actually, technically speaking, the above statement is entirely untrue,
I can help it,
I just don’t want too.
I love falling into a good TV show.
Especially when I find one I like and then discover that there’s like 5 more series of it that I haven’t seen yet.
Talk about feeling like you’ve won lotto!!!!!
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I know you will probably think I’m wrong but I’d rather see men marching against violence towards women than in celebration of past wars.

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"North Hampton is a Domestic violence fre...

I’d rather see men marching,

Against violence towards women,

Than see them celebrating,

Openly,

Their male comrades,

Who’ve either fought,

Or fallen,

During our nations,

Past wars.

Every year on Anzac Day,

We are reminded,

To always show our respect,

For those who have gone before us,

Who have given their lives,

For out benefits,

But what about those who are still falling before us?

Whose lives aren’t being given willingly,

For some greater noble cause,

But instead are being stolen,

Within our own domestic war?

Isn’t it time we  see fit to dedicate,

The same amount of national space,

To the true survivors,

Of the on-going war,

Against domestic violence?

A war that remains,

Too silently,

Unacknowledged,

A war whose victims are too often,

Left defenseless,

By the very same governments,

Who foster,

Such National pride,

For its soldiers,

While it lets its women die.

Least we forget,

The many women who have fallen,

To the senseless acts,

Committed within domestic violence.

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Get Your Wheels Off My Space…Disability Parking….. Why aren’t the rules being enforced when it comes to disabled parking spaces?

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English: A disabled parking place in Torrens. ...

The lack of awareness and social courtesy surrounding the use of disabled parking has long been a bug bare of mine.

It’s a problem that I used to  routinely experience when either dropping my son off or picking him up from college.

My son has autism along with several other health issues which affect his muscle tone, his joints and his vision. He finds it incredibly difficult to walk for any distance or on uneven surfaces, hills or inclines and his muscles fatigue quickly causing him pain that can last for hours as a result.

His vision difficulties make navigating high traffic environments, such as parking lots, extremely dangerous for him as he can not judge how close he is to a car nor how fast it is moving.

In short, we have a disability parking permit for several very good reasons.

Yet despite this, we constantly find that we are unable to use most of the spaces allocated for disability parking because they are always filled with vehicles and drivers that shouldn’t be using them.

There are two disabled parking spaces located side by side in the top car park closest to the college’s main entrance but they are always filled with cars that do not have permits to use them.

Whilst I understand that it may be convenient for parents of non-disabled children to park themselves there and wait for their darlings to wander out of class, it’s still not appropriate nor even legal for them to do so.

Yet they continue taking up those spaces and no one at the college seems prepared to do anything about it.

In reality I’m sure all it would take would be one teacher or admin person standing  in front of the spaces telling people to move on if they don’t have a permit to fix the problem.

However no one at the college seems to feel that it’s in their job description to ensure the safety of disabled students within the car park.

Fed up with it all I remember glaring at a woman one day as I walked past her on my way to collecting my son from his classroom , while she sat in her car, parked in a disability parking space without a permit and stared back at me.

10 minutes later as I emerged from the college entrance with my son leaning on my arm and clearly having trouble walking, the woman who was still parked where she shouldn’t have been,  mouthed the word “sorry” to me and quickly looked away.

At least she apparently felt some modicum of guilt over her actions and whilst sorry may be a start, it didn’t help either my son or I that day as we struggled a good 15 meters further than we should have had too, just to reach the car.

To this day, those disability spaces are always filled with cars that shouldn’t be there.

Fortunately for my son, I discovered a disability parking space much further down in the college’s lower car park that is a walkable distance for him at the rear of the building.

Though it still annoys me that we have to enter and exit from the rear of the building like servants or those who shall remain unseen as it was  in the old days.

This problem is by no means reserved to school environments.

It’s everywhere.

Shopping center’s, public streets, pay and display car parks, even local sporting clubs.

Last week, while picking up my daughter from her trampolining lesson at the Police and Citizens Youth Club (PCYC)  with my son, I was forced to park down in the over flow car park, which is quite a distance away from the front doors of the building, all because a big sparkly new utility truck had taken up the one and only disabled parking space allocated to the entire parking lot.

Having to walk up an unpaved hill from the over flow car park to the front doors of the building was quite an effort for my son.  ( And no, before anyone goes there,  there is absolutely no way I’d even consider leaving him alone in a car surrounded by the darkness of an unlit and unfamiliar car park).

Once inside the doors I approached the receptionist and asked her if the spot out the front of the building was the only disabled car space they had.  She replied that it was so I then drew her attention to the fact that it was being used by a new utility truck that did not have a disability parking permit, where as we, on the other hand who do hold a disability parking permit were forced to park in the overflow car park and walk up.

She  apologized and said  “unfortunately it happens all the time.”

I was gob smacked by this response for two reasons, firstly the venue was the Police and Citizens Youth Club and secondly the disability parking spot could be clearly seen  from the reception desk.  Which means that the staff there, who are mainly either retired or current police officers volunteering their time, could see whether or not any vehicle parked there had the required disability permit.

So clearly the staff there  had decided to ignore the validity of the purpose of that parking space and turn a blind eye to those abusing it.

” Well this is the PCYC so I’m surprised that no one has done anything about it” I replied.

The receptionist, who was also wearing a police uniform I might add, then said, ” Yes we probably should do something about it. I’ll write a note and leave it on the car warning the owner of the car not to park there again. I think I know who it is anyway”.

What? A police officer opting for writing a warning note instead of fining the person concerned?

Once again I was gob smacked.

If this had happened on a street the offender would (or should) be fined. So why was this police officer opting for only leaving a note? Sure she might have officially been off duty but she could have called and had an on duty police officer issue an on the spot fine.

I don’t know about anyone else but I don’t get a warning note if my parking meter runs of out of money.

No I get a fine and an expired parking meter is a much smaller offense than illegally taking up a disabled parking space.

So why wasn’t this person getting a fine for abusing a disabled parking space instead of a polite note asking them not to do it again?

Still chewing on the irony of it all my son and I went and watched the last 15 minutes of my daughters class.

As we headed for the front door I could see the utility still parked there with piece of A4 paper stuck under its windscreen wiper.

I stopped at the car and read what she’d written on the paper.

“Please don’t park here again unless you have a disability permit”

Not much of a warning if you ask me.

So just what is it about disability parking spaces that makes those who don’t need them so apt to abusing them?

Is it simply that we live in a society whose cultural attitudes towards disability somehow makes it seem Okay for people to take advantage of our parking spaces?

Is it because our parking spaces are  usually located as close as possible to whatever building they’ve been allocated too and so therefore they’re simply too convenient not to abuse?

Or is it because no one seems interested in actually taking the proper actions in fining those who abuse them?

How can we get the message out there to others that it’s not Okay to take up a disability parking space just because it’s convenient or you think you can get away with it?

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Plain Label Cigarette Packaging….. Well plain if you don’t count the images of dead people and diseased limbs plastered all over them.

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Okay yes, I confess, I am a smoker.

And yes I know it’s one of the stupidest, most self-destructive things that a person could possibly do for their health …….

And yes I know that cigarette smoking is, now or less these days , being portrayed as the one and only form of self-induced harm that causes our health care system millions of dollars…….

And as a response to this the government have introduced new laws mandating the use of plain label packaging for cigarettes in the hopes that people,  who can no longer buy ‘their brand’ of cigarette,  will quit……..

Yeah right…. Like that’s going to happen!!!!

So to further impress upon us that smoking is currently the greatest evil in our society, these so-called “plain labelled packages” also come complete with graphic, and I do mean graphic, images of diseased lungs, limbs, eyes, pre-term babies, and  even pictures of dead people, just to show us how stupid we all are for smoking.

Now I don’t mind the idea of ‘plain label packaging’ for cigarettes, but what I do mind is being forced to purchase a product with such horrible imagery on it. In fact, I mind it very much and I hate that my children are also being exposed to the graphic imagery on the packaging.

So I ask you, what’s “plain label” about forcing purchasers to have to view such graphic and disturbing imagery simply in order to buy a product that our government seems so reluctant to withdraw from sale yet at the same time is so keen to keep sucking  the tax dollars from?

If smoking is really that big of a blight on our health care system, then why don’t our governments simply shut the cigarette manufacturing companies down or make it illegal to purchase, sell or consume cigarettes?

Furthermore, if you’re going to mandate plain label restrictions on legal drugs like tobacco, then why not do the same for alcohol, which provides just as big, if not bigger headaches not just for our health system but also for our police force?

Why doesn’t a bottle of Whiskey have to come complete with pictures of cirrhosis of the liver, cars wrapped around trees, cemeteries, or graphic depictions of the loss of limbs caused through drink driving accidents?

Tobacco isn’t the only drug that has a habit of killing the people who consume it.

Though it seems to me that we are all of sudden being expected to believe that this is so,

And that drinking copious amounts of alcohol is an innocent past time with absolutely no broader health consequences at all for  our wider society, our health system, our court system  or the individual drinkers  and their families who become caught up in a web of drug abuse far more insidious than cigarette smoking could ever be.

Yet, if drinking is so innocent a past time, then why do we have entire sections of our police force dedicated to catching “drink drivers”, providing “booze buses”  or spending hour after hour patrolling night clubs and the streets around them for those who are committing acts of drunken violence?

When was the last time you heard of a person causing a fatal car crash because they’d had too many cigarettes before they got behind the wheel of a car?

When was the last time you heard of someone starting a brawl in a public place because they’d smoked too many cigarettes, too quickly?

When was the last time you heard of the police being called to attend a domestic violence scene because a man had too many cigarettes, lost control and stated beating up his wife and children?

These are all situations that our police force and indeed our ambulance and health care workers are being forced to deal with because of the use and abuse of alcohol.

Yet alcohol manufactures and consumers are not being forced to endure the horribly graphic imagery that is now adorning cigarette packaging.

So shouldn’t we be asking why this is so?

As far as I’ m concerned alcohol abuse poses a much greater and immediate threat to our youth than cigarette smoking ever will.

Yet it’s cigarette smoking that our governments have chosen to come down hardest upon, whilst allowing the alcohol industry to continue it’s free reign over our society.

Does anyone else view the way our governments are dealing with the scourge of tobacco whilst ignoring the multiple costs of alcohol abuse as a double standard the way that I do?

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Happiness Wants and needs….Why is the pursuit of happiness our goal?

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Happiness these days has become so thoroughly entombed in the notion of having all that you want, instead of all that you need, that even imagining a life without either a phone or the inter net is far closer to most people’s version of hell than it ever  would be their  version of happiness.

Which is odd really considering that on some parabolic level we all agree that money cannot buy happiness…..

Or is it that money cannot buy love?

Neither of which is true by the way.

If you are desperately poor and lacking in food, than money would indeed buy you a larger slice of the happiness pie than the one you are currently languishing on.

Remember it’s about having all that you need….. not all that you want.

And as for love….. well….. I guess that’s entirely dependent on your overall concept of love….

Though I have to say….. there aren’t too many lonely millionaires out there….

Whether or not you call paid companionship, in whatever form it takes, (trophy wives, toy boys, sex workers) love, is entirely up to you.

But regardless of the trivialities involved we all buy into the lie that the latest job, car, house, partner, gadget, clothes or holiday destination, will lead us ever closer toward our ultimate goal of happiness.

But why must happiness be our goal in the first place?

Could it be that we humans are now all such greedy creatures that like drug addicts we are all searching for the next big hit of happiness?

A feeling of complete well-being that  we’d once experienced organically only in the brief, and the mostly intrinsically earned, moments of time?

Is the endless pursuit of happiness now nothing more than the futile attempt to locate a drug dealer of the mind who simply does not exist?

A dealer who could in reality have never existed because happiness is and always has been a virtue of the soul and not a reward of the mind?

Could we have gotten the concept of happiness so completely confused, that all we are doing in our pursuit of it, is causing ourselves the unnecessary pain of expecting a transient experience to become an unrealistic and unsustainable constant?

Has the idea of happiness become an impossible yard stick?

A stick we use to measure ourselves, to judge our lives by and find them so constantly wanting,  that we now end up  beating ourselves over the head with it instead?

What do you think?

What would make you happy?

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Puberty Blues… Then and Now….Do you think it’s easier being a teenager in today’s society?

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Puberty Blues

Is it just me or is anyone else experiencing ‘flash backs’ of their own adolescents while watching ‘Puberty Blues’?

The music, the fashion, the coming of age in a time when the confusion over cultural identity seemed to sit  so distinctly at odds against the fading line of  our parents ideas of what ‘should’ and shouldn’t be done.

A time filled with Shagging Wagons and teen sex that relied almost exclusively on girls saying ‘yes’ to the demands of  ‘cool’ boys purely for social status.

The cool girls, of course, were the ones that said yes.

The moles, or the desperately ‘uncool girls’,  were the ones who were never asked to climb into the back of a tin box on wheels and give over their bodies to the fumbling of  a ‘cool’ boy’s sweaty hands.

The loners were usually the  girls who  refused to buy into the whole concept of conforming to the coolness of promiscuity and ‘sexual liberation’.

Today the clothes and the hairstyles are different and teens are no longer forced to try and have private conversations over the family phone with everyone listening in, but apart from that, has anything really changed?

There are still the in cliques and the outcasts.

Still the cool girls who say yes and the social pariahs who say no.

Still the cool boys who play sport and the whimpy boys who do not.

I know which group I slotted into but which group did you belong to growing up?

And do you think there’s much difference in being a teenager today as opposed to being a teenager back  then (in the 70’s)?

Have your say and vote on which decade you’d rather have grown up in.

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Breaking Point. The crisis facing parents of Young Adults with Special Needs in Australia.

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Young couple with baby.

 

 

For some parents of special needs children, living the dream of having a happy home and family life, was simply never, ever going to be an option.

Last year SBS aired an ‘Insight’ forum discussion with parents of young adults with special needs  who have relinquished their child’s care over to the State as a consequence of not receiving the support they as individuals, carers, parents and families required to adequately maintain the level of care needed at home.

 

Many of the parents and family members who took part in the discussion stated that they had been calling for ” in home help” and support for years.

 

All to no avail.

 

Even on the rare occasions when  children had qualified for respite care, families were then told that the waiting lists for those respite services were months even years long.

 

One mother described dedicating months of valuable time having her child’s and her families level of need assessed, only to be told at the end of the assessment process, that although her family did indeed qualify for assistance there was no longer any funding available to provide the hours of  care support they had indeed qualified for.

 

Throughout this discussion families reported that their pleas for help and support went routinely unanswered and that the lack of recognition over their genuine need for support led ultimately to a state of crisis.

 

Parents found that it was only once they’d hit that state of absolute crisis and inability to cope with the daily care regimes of their special needs children that any help was offered at all.

 

By then however, the parents and families concerned, had often reached too deep a level of desperation and exhaustion to turn back from the relinquishing process.

 

Many stated that, if  instead of having their pleas ignored or told there was no funding, they’d received the support and respite needs they’d asked for over the course of many years,  then perhaps they may have been able to provide in home care for a longer period of time.

 

Though as one mother pointed out, that as young children with special needs grown into young adults with special needs, there will always be significant issues that parents as full-time carers will have to confront in terms of their child’s on going care needs.

 

Often this means confronting issues of personal safety as aging parents are left to care for adult children whose level of physical strength far out weighs  their own.

 

Parents also state that as full-time carers they literally cannot work outside the home. They therefore usually have no income other than the Carers Pension.

 

This means that they also have no Superannuation.  

 

So as  parental full-time carers of special needs children age, they very  often have little to no additional financial resources to fall back on.

 

This means that they can’t  ‘pay’ for private carers to help them and that unless their children/young adults  qualify for government support via support agencies, the parents are  placed in a position in which they have no option but to relinquish their children/young adults into State care.

 

As one mother says in relation to the charge that as families and parents they are failing in their responsibilities to care for their children…….

 

“Our Children are not the burden. It is the broken system that is the burden not our beautiful children. If we could have gotten the help and support we needed to function as full-time carers, we’d still be doing it, but we couldn’t get any help until we’d reached crisis point and by then , for us as a family, it was too late.”

 

Another father wept as he openly admitted that he could never go back to the chaos, stress and daily depression he’d dealt with for years, while trying to get the support his family needed in order to properly care for his son at home.

 

Many parents who had relinquished the daily care of their young adults to the State also expressed that there was a sense in which the alleviation of the stress of having to maintain their young adults daily care routine, once again allowed them to become  parents who were able to fully delight in their child/young adult.

 

For families relinquishing care does not equate to handing a young adult over to the State and never seeing them again, as is the common understanding of relinquishing care. Instead it equates to the certainty of knowing that their young adult is receiving the daily care that they need.  The care is quite simply being provided outside of the home environment by people who are being paid to do so. This way of providing care enables all family members to maintain  full contact.

 

Though the expectation is that parents of children with special needs should automatically take on the role of full-time parental carers as their children grow into young adults with special needs, the experiences of some of the parents within this discussion  indicated that it is time to begin to address and challenge the many issues and inconsistencies involved with such an expectation.

 

The honesty with which these parents gave voice to an issue that is fast becoming a silent epidemic, shrouded in shame and personal blame is simply amazing.

 

I for one hope that discussions such as these continue to be brought out into the public arena so that those outside the experience of caring daily for a young adult with special needs can gain a greater understanding of the complexity of the issues facing not just young adults with special needs but also their parents as carer’s and their  entire family members.

 

Anyone interested in watching  Insight’s Breaking Point click on the link below.

 

http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/2272818399/Insight-Breaking-Point-Sarah-on-respite

 

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Bite Me…… Indeed!!!!!!!

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The  billboard erected on the site of our local petrol (gas) station, directly across the road from our local supermarket, regularly promoted ginormous versions of trendy products.

As kids we grew up absorbing whatever images it presented to our eyes every time our parents filled up their car with petrol or went shopping for food.

In other words, at least twice a week, we drank in its advertising message, whether it was aimed at us or not.

As with all advertising it wasn’t something that I consciously thought about while I was growing up. Of course there would be the times when the billboard displayed some huge glowing version of the latest toy or movie that made it the topic of full-blown playground conversation, but apart from that,  though it was always seen, it wasn’t  generally spoken about.

So common place had that petrol station Billboard become that as I progressed through my early teenage years  it became a local meeting place for many us. ‘Meet you under the Boards at 12.00’.

Then one day in my late teens, the Billboard began hosting an image that became the highlight of every teenage boys dreams.

It began with a larger than life set of female breasts in a skimpy bra, accompanied by an incredibly flat, tanned and well toned stomach  that flowed flawlessly into  extremely high cut bikini underwear on a model with no hair and whose legs were amputated at the thigh.

At that size, as you can imagine, the female form supposedly hidden beneath the flimsy fabric of the underwear, was incredibly detailed.

The caption plastered at the bottom of the semi naked woman  was “Bite Me”.

Bite Me Indeed!!!!!

After a month of being confronted with this image and hearing the boys go on about it, my friends and I began to avoid the Billboard.

It no longer served its purpose to us as meeting place.

None of us wanted to be seen hanging out beneath this male image of female perfection.

We soon  found however, that although we had chosen to avoid being associated with the Billboard, we could not on the whole avoid either seeing it, or having to deal with the comments it instigated.

We all needed petrol and we all needed groceries and we could attain neither without confronting the larger than life female anatomy that glowed like a false religious beacon  over  both the petrol station and the grocery store.

Worse still, both the petrol station and the grocery store were constantly lit up of a night-time to prevent theft.

This meant that the Billboard took on even more of an ethereal glow and became more noticeable in the wee hours of the night.

After two months of being forced to confront  this image my friends and I decided to  do something about it.

We formed a little gang of women ranging in age from 16 to 40 (yes for those of you who are astute this included both mothers and daughters) and we began hollowing out eggs and replacing their contents with paint.

We’d figured out that, due to the perpetual lighting up of the Billboard, we’d have to approach it from a distance, this meant finding a way to deface the Billboard from behind the relative safety of the  petrol bowsers metres away from the board itself.

After a few false starts, (we’d tried paint bombs (balloons filled with paint)earlier in the week but found that our strike rate with this method was so poor that the next day our efforts where hardly visible)so we settled on eggs.

We made up a healthy supply of ammunition and planted ourselves in the dead of night behind the bowsers.

As the first few eggs hit their mark we cheered on the splurges of purple and red paint that began to spread across and smear that ‘perfect’ image.

Needless to say we lobbed each and every single egg we had (around 40 after several nights of planning) at that Billboard.

By the time we’d finished our rainbow of colors had infiltrated the Billboards image and turned it into an abstract art work that masked its former delineations.

Gone were the barely covered, larger than life breasts. Gone were the hairless thighs with their perfect groin. Gone were the indentations beneath the thinly veiled fabric that highlighted the model’s female genitalia.

We left that night covered in a form of female satisfaction of our very own.

The loss of the Billboard was lamented loudly by some men who suddenly began spouting about the ‘danger of graffiti.

It  made the local newspaper and even induced a flurry of calls on the local radio stations chat line.

Once the dust had settled it became clear that our actions were supported by many of the quietly spoken mothers within our community who began to express, at the suggestion that the board be reinstated with a new version of the old poster,  their discomfort at having to expose their children to the initial Billboard poster.

That particular poster was never reinstated and not long after a poster promoting a new kids movie appeared in its place.

This was in the late 80’s. Now such advertising imagery is accepted as being common place and removing it is no longer as simple as throwing a few paint filled eggs at a Billboard.

More is the pity.

But it hasn’t always been that way and I think that is the thing that we need to remember.

The recent influx on our TV’s and in our magazines  of unattainable and unrealistic representations of women hasn’t always been so.

It is a form of  female representation that needs to continue to be challenged.

We simply need to find a new way to get out message across.

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It may be your home, but is it really your house? Exploring the Public Housing Debate.

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Seventh Voice Original

In Australia we are lucky. We have a system that provides public housing for those who are unable to afford the private rental market. Well in theory, that’s what it’s there for.

Of late there’s been a lot of discussion as to whether  individuals  who are living in public housing, have the right to remain in properties that may better serve the needs of  those with young families.

The discussion goes as follows:

-In Australia we have a public housing shortage.

-This shortage is seeing those with young families on low or no incomes residing in temporary or short-term emergency accommodation.

-However, there is also a dire shortage of temporary or emergency accommodation due to the long lists of those requiring it while waiting for public housing to become available.

-Some young families are currently living out of friend’s garages, cars, caravans or tents.

-Australia is a country with a demographically aging population.

-Many who are now in public housing are aged 50 years or over. This means that their children have grown up and are typically no longer residing in the house with them.

-Hence we have individuals or couples living in 3 and 4 bedroom homes provided to them by public housing.

-These homes were secured originally as family dwellings when the occupant’s children were younger.

The proposed solution to the public housing crisis is that those individuals or couples who are now living in 3 or 4 bedroom  homes  that they no longer require, should be moved on to smaller public housing  residences in order to provide the current crop of struggling young families housing.

The problem is however, that those already situated within public housing, do not wish to move on from the homes they have lived in for years and in which their own children have grown up.

I can see this debate from both sides. As a child I grew up in public housing and I know first-hand  just how many memories can be attached to a family ‘home’ that is not technically your own.

Yet, also as a child, due to lack of accommodation, my family experienced living in a caravan for 4 months in winter.  It was awful, cold and soul-destroying.  I would never want to do that again and I could not imagine subjecting my own children to that kind of stressful homeless misery.

Now, as an adult, I live next door to a 3 bedroom public housing home. The tenants, a couple in their 50’s, have been there for over 27 years.  Their children are grown up. They both work and whilst they do not own the bricks and mortar they live in, they do indeed own the two 4 wheel drives and two speed boats that fill their lane way.

I have to admit that every time I see a report on the news about a young family being forced to live out of a car I wonder how it is that the couple next door can continue to live in a house far bigger than they actually need, while others who desperately need such accommodation are being told there’s no public housing available for them?

It also strikes me, that if the couple next door can afford 4 wheel drives and speed boats, then surely they can also afford to leave public housing?

So could it now be the case that those who have been receiving public housing for so long, genuinely no longer, actually need it, but rather, simply feel entitled to it?

Could it be that some people receiving  public housing  are abusing the system?

If so how do we stop this practice?

My solution to taking some of the emotion out of this debate is to ask these very simple questions:

If you were renting privately and the landlord chose not to renew your tenancy contract, but instead rent the house to another family, would you be able to refuse to move on the grounds that you did now want too?

Would it legally matter how long you’ve been living in that rental property?

Would viewing that rental property as your home legally prevent a landlord from being able to rent it to someone else?

Should having the income available to rent a private property, but choosing not too out of habit, be considered a legitimate reason to stay in public housing?

The answer to these questions is no.

You could not legally choose to stay in a house that is not yours just because you don’t want to move, have lived in it a long time, or view it as your home.

If the house is not your own, then whilst it may be your home, it is technically not your property.

Therefore I do not understand why choosing to remain in public housing when you have the financial ability not too, is seen as a viable mechanism for out-weighing the needs of those who genuinely require public housing.

I cannot help but to agree that it is time to  take a good long look at how our public housing system is being run and if necessary, overhaul all the inequities that have trickled in.

For whilst it may be a daunting and emotional experience to have to consider moving to a new location at a later stage in life, it is not a legitimate reason to prevent young families from benefiting from public housing.

That is , after all, what public housing is there for.

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