Last week, Inclusion Alberta, a non-profit organization that supports people with disabilities, announced that the government had cut $500,000 of their funding.
The Ministry of Community and Social Services stated that the funding was intended to directly help people with disabilities. Their analysis showed that the funding was not having enough of a direct impact.
“Alberta’s government is ensuring that resources are allocated directly to connecting individuals and families to supports and services as quickly as possible,” the Ministry told the Global News in an email.
In the last year, the government has increased funding to its two disability programs, Persons with Developmental Disabilities and Family Supports for Children with Disabilities. But they’ve reduced funding to advocacy groups.
This begs the question of what kind of services can be said to have a direct impact on the lives of people with disabilities.
Sometimes, the impact of support is obvious. A child with cerebral palsy who moves with the help of a wheelchair, for example, might need help eating and using the washroom. Someone who helps the child do both of these things directly improves the child’s life.
But not all supports that directly improve the life of an individual with disabilities are obvious.
Advocacy Improves Lives
Braden Mole, the Vice President of Inclusion Edmonton Region, has lived with a disability for most of his life. When he was eight years old, doctors removed a part of his brain. They’d determined that this part was causing him to have seizures. While on the operating table, he had a stroke that left him partially paralyzed.
Mole is an advocate for children’s health and for people with disabilities. As a teenager, he fundraised $1 million for the Stollery Children’s Hospital, the hospital that saved his life numerous times when he was a child. He’s also served on the board of Inclusion Alberta for over seven years.
Mole says that it was only through his community’s support that he achieved his fundraising goals and is the advocate he is today.
In South Africa, there’s a saying that goes, “A person is a person because of other people.”
The people around us affect our well-being. If they care for us and give us the help we need, this affects us. If they ignore us and don’t help us in our time of need, this affects us.
This is especially true for people with disabilities.
Mole, with the financial support of the Edmonton Arts Council, is currently writing a book about advocacy for people with disabilities.
In his book, he reflects on his experiences in a segregated classroom. One elementary school teacher, though, pushed for him to be in the regular classroom instead of in a segregated classroom.
He talks about his goal to raise a million dollars, and how many people didn’t believe he could do it. Words from an encouraging doctor, though, gave him the courage to pursue his dreams.
It was because of the people around him that understood the importance of including him in the regular world that he lives a full life today.
Some people in our communities naturally know how to support people with disabilities. And some of us are not quite there but can learn.
And the more the families and communities can learn about how to include and support people with disabilities, the higher quality of life those with disabilities in our community can lead.
This work of educating people was some of what Inclusion Alberta was doing with the $500,000 that has been cut.
“Not Very Noble”
Mole reflected in an interview with TheRockies.Life that “The government and non-profit sector exist to provide some kind of service to the community and improve the lives of those within it. In the non-profit sector we do this through charitable gifts. The government does this through taxes.”
According to Mole, the government is supposed to look after the community and make sure people have what they need. Not everyone can work a full-time job, and even those with full-time jobs aren’t always paid wages that allow them to feed, clothe, and house themselves. The government should step in and fill in those gaps.
Furthermore, Mole says that “government is meant to foster” community.
The government’s cuts to funding for the communities of people with disabilities does the complete opposite of this. “We’re basically left in the dark,” Mole says.
“It’s not very noble what the government is doing right now,” he says. He’d like to see more government funding for organizations supporting people with disabilities. The reality is that the government is cutting funding could have helped improve the lives of some of the most vulnerable members of our communities.
