Making Connections

Community participation

Simon Darcy is a lecturer at the University of Technology, Sydney and has a spinal cord injury and is a power wheelchair user. Simon opened up the issue of people wanting to empower themselves to participate in any activities that they choose to do, eg in sport, leisure, tourism, and the arts.

“Too often service providers judge us by what they think we can't do rather than empowering us to try the things that we want to do,” said Simon.

“What are the things that make participating in community activities easy and what are the barriers/constraints that you regularly confront in trying to participate in community activities? This is your chance create a best practice list or shame file for community participation.”

Tony Leggett found that home care timing can make evening activities very inflexible, and transport and access are big issues.

“One challenge for anyone with SCI and a social life is accessible pubs and clubs. Especially for the younger folks who still want to go to the trendier places (as opposed to the local RSL), the access is nearly always nonexistent. It may seem a bit flippant, but for some people it’s important to still feel you ‘have a life’ in this area.”

Another participant pointed out how difficult it is to get accessible holiday accommodation that also allows for kids. There can also be discriminatory pricing. Spinal Cord Injuries Australia has put together a database of holiday accommodation for people with disabilities.

Kel Smith, recreation officer at Moorong spinal unit, asked about the role and example of peers is in empowering people's participation in the things they want to do such as work, leisure, community activity and sports.

Simon replied that the role of peers is very important, and that the image of regular people doing regular activities is tremendously empowering and examples of these should be encouraged.

One participant, Greeny, talked about life after rehabilitation. “Life after rehab is initially hard as you have to learn how to manage life with your SCI but it improves with the more you get out there.

“The more you can learn about services out there, who can help you and what the external environment is like around you, the easier it will be to work out how you can live and get with things with a SCI. Even just the first few trips out doing things on your own will be hard - working out car transfers/transport, where the disabled parks are, where is the lift? Do the shops have access? Do I need an attendant carer to assist me maybe, how long will that shift need to be if I do, will it become an ongoing shift? Do they have accessible toilets? All a lot to think about.

“However, the second time you go there, you will know half of those questions, so the whole task will begin to get easier, and you can work through what worked/what didn't about the trip.  It isn't easy but the effort down the track is worth it.”

Another participant, Colt, called it the 'Re-Integration Cocktail' and your life will be shaken rather than stirred!

“When you consider that a vast majority off people are injured in the earlier years of their life (15 - 40 or thereabouts) there are so many stages of life still to be lived and dealt with - so at each stage there are different integration issues. Quite often it can be a case of 'I wonder what disability issues I will have to deal with today?’” he said.

“Although many people post SCI do 'move on', re-establish themselves in the community, lead successful, happy fulfilling lives the fact remains that a person with a SCI is living and participating in a 'hostile' 'able bodied' environment that is never fully prepared (at this moment in time) to let you participate in the community as an able bodied person can. I feel the day will come that we will but there's still a lot of advocating to be done to achieve this.”