These national approaches to disability support have the potential to make a huge difference to the lives of people with a disability and their carers and even to the workers in the sector.
What it means in a local resilience context is harder to pinpoint. We have a precisely defineable number of people with a disability locally and also people providing paid and unpaid carer services. This is something that affects the lives of a significant number of people in the upper Kedron Brook valley community.
How would we handle disability support if we didn’t have huge amounts of energy from petrol and coal? What effect would it make if the global economy went belly up because of energy prices turning off the growth engine?
My thinking so far is that we need local facilities. Just as we have a lot of local childcare centres we would be well-served by having local facilities where people with a disability and their carers could access shared resources and support. It would give it visibility and make it easier for our community to help ourselves to help each other to learn from each other.