Iemma offers hope to Kingsdene kids

Jeremy Halcrow | 28 June 2006

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Community ‘hero’ says prayer kept her going

DESCRIBED by Cabinet Minister Brendan Nelson as a ‘community hero’ for her pioneering work with children with a severe intellectual disability, Gloria Boyd retired this month after 26 years at Kingsdene Special School. For the past 17 years, Gloria has been principal and is in no doubt that the highlight was the ‘miracle’ in 2003 that saw the Special School saved from closure at the final moment.

“It’s the right time to hand over the reins to give Kingsdene the impetus to go into the future,” she says. “I never dreamt we would still be here. We at Kingsdene really know that ‘My God is so big, so strong and so mighty, there’s nothing my God cannot do’.”

She says the prayers, encouragement and financial support of Sydney Anglicans and those in the wider community have been ‘overwhelming’, but achieved much more than merely keeping a school open. It has brought the love of Christ to a very special group of children.

“To share the message of the gospel with our students is not easy because they are not necessarily processing words and pictures,” she says. “But over the years of worshipping through singing and praying, many come to know Jesus.”

Despite the NSW Government’s $1 billion disability package, parents worry it’s no solution to an ‘immoral’ lack of services, writes JEREMY HALCROW.

For exactly 30 years this month, Kingsdene has been a lonely beacon of hope for families struggling to care for children with severe intellectual disabilities.

“One by one all the other schools have closed,” says Mary Lou Carter, who is secretary of the Kingsdene Parent Group.

The announcement in the recent NSW state budget of $1 billion in additional funding for disability services over the next five years has boosted parents’ hopes that Kingsdene-style care will be provided post-school as well.

Mrs Carter was invited to the Government’s round tables as part of the preparation for the new package.

“Everywhere I go, I tell the government that Kingsdene is the right model,” she says. “Kingsdene is a lighthouse for our children.”

She admits to Southern Cross that what makes Kingsdene’s care so special is not so easily replicated. “That’s because Jesus is there,” she says

However, Anglicare itself recognises that the additional funding provides an opportunity to expand its current disability services, such as Kingsdene, to other areas of Sydney Diocese, such as in the Illawarra.

“Anglicare will be looking to access some of the funding now available from the state government to develop programs to support families with a child with a disability in a number of regions within the Diocese with a particular focus on respite services”, says Philip Coller, Anglicare’s Community Support Outreach Manager.

However, Mrs Carter remains worried.

“I don’t know how it’s going to help us. I am really fearful that when [my son] Nicholas leaves school there is no accommodation for him,” she says.

“Last year, about 1,000 people could not find accommodation. The new money will not meet future need.

“It is really quite immoral that the need has not been addressed for 30 years and that governments have used an ideology to abrogate their responsibility. But to give [Minister for Disability Services] John Della Bosca his due he had the clout to get as much as he did from Treasury.”

Make no mistake. The plan delivered by Mr Della Bosca and the Premier is courageous on a number of levels, not least that it overthrows the orthodoxy which held out ‘integration’ and ‘mainstreaming’ as a one-size-fits-all solution and dismissed Kingsdene’s approach. Describing Iemma’s plan as a ‘paradigm shift’, Kristine Chipps from Kingsdene’s respite service says the Premier has recognised the diversity amongst people with disabilities.

“There must be a myriad of services to meet a diversity of needs,” she says.

The turnaround in policy thinking can be traced back to 2003 and the enquiry into the killing of Jason Dawes, who had autism, by his mother. The ombudsman found that while Government policy was to provide out-of-home care to families like the Dawes, those services didn’t exist and this contributed to Jason’s death.

“It will be a very different climate for our families,” adds Ms Chipps. “The plan not only promotes the rights of the person with a disability, but also recognises the need for quality of life for the family, which has never been recognised before.”

While even $1 billion is not enough to meet every need, the Government appears acutely aware of criticism it is being financially irresponsible.

“I am also grateful for the unswerving support of my Ministerial colleagues, in spite of the tough fiscal challenges the Government faces,” Mr Della Bosca said. “The Commonwealth’s allocation to other States of $2.5 billion paid by NSW residents in GST each year makes funding critically important human services very difficult.”

The test, agrees Ms Chipps, is whether the plan is sustainable.

“It is clear that the bucket needs to be made bigger and Government does not have the means to do that alone,” she says. “The question is whether this plan will go forward if Labor isn’t re-elected next year. The Opposition doesn’t yet have a detailed plan like this.”

Mrs Carter can not emphasis more strongly the acuteness of the need.

“We need assistance outside the family otherwise the family will disintegrate,” she said.

The most significant concern for Mrs Carter is that outside the structured support of Kingsdene, her son Nicholas will lose the life-skills he has learnt.

“The children who leave Kingsdene are group home ready,” she says. “Nicholas needs structured support not the locks on every door that we have at home so he doesn’t assault the kitchen and everything else. There should be accommodation there that gives them a roof without losing their skills and friends.”

But Kingsdene’s Principal seems convinced that the Iemma plan moves policy in the right direction for the school families. There was a time recently, explains Gloria Boyd, when the families could not even imagine accommodation support for their children once they had graduated from Kingsdene.

“The situation was disgraceful,” says Mrs Boyd. “Some families unable to cope, had to declare their children homeless to get support.”

“The focus [of the Iemma plan] is post-school which is what our parents worry about. It gives them hope for the future.

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