Sure is a roundabout way to accomplish something for the disabled. The lowly overtaxed individual or the business owner or the government itself don’t have the wherewithal and common sense nor the charity or caring enough to make their little empire a bit more accommodating for some one who is handicapped? Takes a village to raise an idiot. How about it takes a village to make life easier for the disabled? Rather than have these meetings, why not set a date to modify a little part of yer personal life and do something to accommodate the handicapped? Maybe all three levels of government can give everyone a tax break on this? Use greed and the love of money (other peoples) to accomplish this program? Greed and money works. Carry on.

Develop a “white paper”? I have rolls of them that are just as useful in my WC.

And I’ll bet these meetings will be held during the day which excludes those that are employed but have disabilities..

Tie him into a wheel chair, here in PG, for the winter. that should give him lots of input. if he survives.

Surely this is not the first time someone has looked at “issues facing British Columbians who have disabilities”!!

1. Who has looked at those issues before?
2. What did they discover?
3. What were the objectives set?
4. Have those objectives been accomplished?

Should be relatively simple to start the “conversation” off with the answers to those questions.

Think they discovered they can’t hear.. so nothing was done.. Now with elections in near future, more make work projects will be developing

“Him”? “Him” who? The lawyer involved is female.
Who’s handicapped, eh?

Sayitaintso says “Tie him into a wheel chair”

I am not sure what you would accomplish by tying a visually impaired woman into a chair for he winter …

Gus says “Surely this is not the first time someone has looked at “issues facing British Columbians who have disabilities”!!”

Come on Gus … I know you have attended enough of these “consultation” style meetings to know that they usually start with a recap of previous studies and the subsequent progress (or lack thereof.)

The key difference I see in this process is that there is an independent expert group attempting to secure input from a diverse cross section of the disabled community. My past experiences have usually involved an able bodied government worker trying to tell the community what is good for them based on the government worker’s views and the current govt pitch of the day.

I am sure Ms. Qualtrough would find the comments in today’s blog enlightening (and frustrating.)

Anotherside wrote: “I know you have attended enough of these “consultation” style meetings to know that they usually start with a recap of previous studies and the subsequent progress (or lack thereof.)”

Every now and then I have an “ah” moment. I have been getting more and more of them as I get older that mostly have a common theme – been there, done that.

Going over and over the same process ends up ….. guess where ….. the same results over an over again.

We should be smarter than that.

My Shangri La vision is that if these people would just try to educate the public a bit on where in the process we are and where we want to go and that we need to review where we have been and what we have accomplished, the public may just be a little less frustrated.

I have had enough of facilitators who have not walked the walk. The notion that anyone can facilitate and that facilitators should be neutral should be reconsidered as far as I and a number of professionals in the field are saying.

This stuff is old technique. We have far better instruments to explore.

“It’s important to get their perspective” Really?? Sounds so wonderful, however, in the past, little has been done to provide for the visually impaired person I know. The government changed the rules for CNIB members, and unless the person uses a white cane, he isn’t even eligible for a free transit pass any more, plus has to pay for cab rides home from work when his late shift is over, while working for minimum wage. And yes, he will probably be working and won’t be able to attend the meeting. He has rent to pay.

Why on earth do we need a public consultation to learn more about the issues facing British Columbians’ with disabilities – set for January 21 & 22, 2014? If you go to the City of Prince George web site and look up committees, the “Advisory Committee on Accessibility” have Reports that go back as far as 2004, their Minutes go back to 2010 and their Agenda’s go back to 2012. I just skimmed some of the items but good grief!!! They are still talking about the same items then as now. Get on it already !!! Why are they re-inventing the wheel?
Let me guess, we’ll also have to pay for this consultant to come here and tell us information we already know? Why does the city have this committee? or any of their committees for that matter? You know that for each committee that meets and most of them at after 5:00pm, that a city staff member is there to take minutes. All the wages that went into OT to take the minutes what have we learned or what can we take from all those reports that go back as far as 2004? And those are just the ones they’ve listed!!!!!

Consultation is easy. Implementation is hard. Every three years, you can start the process again.

You got it Hello? … !!!

There is no integrated system in place.

The higher up in the governance echelon the muckety-mucks are the less they seem to pay attention to the lower muckety-mucks.

It should be an iterative and integrated process which goes over

1. discovery
2. objective setting
3. implementation
4. review of success of implementation with respect to objectives
5. review of objectives – gap analysis and verification of unfinished objectives (this is actually the same as #1
6. renewed objectives (same as #2)

and so on … an iterative process …..

As I said, where are the original notes and processes from when this was done before. Then go from there.

Surely this cannot be the first time!! Or did everyone work blind … ;-)
process

How do I get invited to participate at this event? (I am not interested in merely observing, I want to actually be heard!)

All you need to do is contact them and register to attend. I’ll find the web address and post it in the comments.

As per my last post, here is the web site information for the Disability White Paper Meetings.

To learn more about the Disability White Paper consultation, please visit http://engage.gov.bc.ca/disabilitywhitepaper

ah i guess its a good thing i’m deaf, because what usually comes out of the gov’s mouth is either a stall tactic or fake promises with an election on the way. The past 20 years, i’ve seen a serious decline in support for those who are deaf or hard of hearing. I’m confident to say, those odds are probably the same with those who are suffering things which aren’t “normal”

I’m beyond the blaming part, I’ve lived with it for so long, i just do my best with what i have, respect from those around me. I just feel bad for those struggling to find their places in this world, and not enough support to help find their ways.

humanity over greed always pays out. (after all we’re tax payers too. more money in your pocket?)