On Wed, 28 May 2003 18:17:50 +0200, Ronald Balzan wrote:
[...snip...]
> ..., and am currently working within a Social Work Service
> for disabled persons and their families (which in turn is part of any
> Agency that provides services for disabled people).
Is this a government office? (I am not exactly familiar with the Maltese
structure.
> My current role within the team (according to my current job description
> is mainly administrative,
So if I understand this correctly, you are part of a team that administers
services provided to disabled people.
From you post, I am not clear on what the kind of services provided are.
As Fiona, Maria and Bertha, I am also Canadian. I live in Toronto, Ontario
and have read their replies to this post.
My experience deals mainly with spinal cord injuries, I have paraplegia
and am a "peer support volunteer" for a NGO -- The Canadian Paraplegic
Association (CPA)" <http://www.canparaplegic.org/national/index.tpl>, I
don't think they have offices in Quebec or Manitoba yet, but I may be
mistaken. If you look at the "Links" section:
<http://www.canparaplegic.org/national/level2.tpl?var1=browseweblinks>
you will get an idea of the services covered.
This however, only deals with one kind of diability -- SCI, there are other
NGO's like:
The Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada
<http://www.mssociety.ca/en/default.htm>
Epilepsy Toronto
<http://www.epilepsytoronto.org/index.html>
Epilepsy Canada (provides many links to other related sites)
<http://www.epilepsy.ca/eng/mainSet.html>
The Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) [does have offices in
all provinces]
http://www.cnib.ca/eng/
There are many other types of disabilities and would be covered by NGOs
as well.
> but since I use a wheelchair and am quite involved within the disability
> field in Malta (the country I come from), we were thinking of shifting
> the focus of my job a bit more towards disability advocacy.
Would you care to expand a bit on your statement?
All the NGOs I have referenced deal with advocacy at both individual and
social levels.
>My question is the following: what role/s do you think a disabled advocate
>could/should have within a service such as the one mentioned above?
I suspect you are trying to have an effect on a national level, again pardon
my ignorance but I seem to recall that Malta has a population of 400,000
and a land mass of about 300 sq/km and the issues to be tackled may be
different than we have in Canada.
If we take Canada as a benchmarking standard, I think it would complicate
matters a bit. While the USA has a federal "Americans with Disabilities Act"
<http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/adahom1.htm> we in Canada do not.
In our case it is better to start from the bottom up, in other words at the
provincial level -- and after a long and bitter battle we finally have the
"Ontarians with Disabilities Act (ODA)"
<http://www.gov.on.ca/citizenship/accessibility/english/act2001.htm>
that was fought for by "The Ontarians with Disabilities Act Committee"
<http://www.odacommittee.net/> -- in their *Members* section you will find
many of the NGOs I didn't list above.
It is not the best, but it is a start. This year we have provincial
elections and we hope to influence whatever party get elected to further
improvements <http://www.odacommittee.net/2003_election.html>.
Once we have achieved strength and stability in the ODA, other provinces
will follow and then we will be in a position to enact Federal legislation
that hopefully would cover all aspects of disabilities and allow for
equitable participation in a barrier free society.
Cheers!
--
Han Tacoma
~ Artificial Intelligence is better than none! ~
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