Strong Voices

IHC Director of Advocacy Trish Grant says four reports touching on the lives of people with intellectual disability this year highlight the failure of our disability system.

Four major reports released this year show the widespread disadvantage and discrimination that intellectually disabled people in New Zealand experience daily.

Collectively, they should send a message that our current system is undervaluing and failing our intellectually disabled community – the Government must take a wrecking ball to this decrepit structure.

There was a cruel divide in Ollie and Ted Morris’s family. To be born a boy was to be born with an intellectual disability.

The cause of the disability that affected each of their four sons and none of their five daughters remains a mystery after nearly 90 years.

The Gisborne couple’s eldest son Donald, born in 1932, was the first to be affected. Then it affected brothers John, Peter and Rex.

Accessible Properties tenant Garry Hopa is a laid-back kind of chap, but he sprang into action when he saw a dangerous fire.

He’s been praised for stopping the fire from spreading and causing widespread damage.

Garry, 64, who lives in the Accessible Properties’ Graham Street complex in Hamilton, was first on the scene after a fridge went up in flames recently at Robyn Cann’s nearby unit.

“I was moving some pot plants from my place to my girlfriend’s on a trolley and I went around the corner and seen all this smoke,” Garry says.

Christine Lee believes in the power of storytelling to build acceptance of people with intellectual disabilities.

“Telling stories contributes to understanding in the community, because cultural change takes time,” she says. “You have got to keep telling people’s stories so that it becomes the norm.”