Ms Deirdre Fitzgerald-Graham:

I want to respond to something the Senator said. It struck a chord with me when she spoke about people with disabilities facing cul-de-sacs in their lives. It brings me back to the notion of where we come from in LEAP whereby the role of the families is poorly understood. If we want the people we love to be connected to others and to be part of society as adults we have to think about the relationships they form when they are children. Their classmates and the neighbours they grow up with will become their co-workers and friends later in life and they are less likely to meet this cul-de-sac the Senator described so eloquently. It is about the role of families in supporting the full inclusion of their child with a disability.

We need to think about various roles now if we are serious about implementation of the UNCRPD. We speak about roles such as inclusion facilitators and community animators. Our vision is to move beyond the approach of employing only therapists, commissioning only separate or segregated services or having only one pathway for people with a disability towards segregated sheltered workshops. We ask the committee to consider this point in its final write-up.