Over 93,000 people responded to the EU LGBT survey conducted by the EU Fundamental Rights Agency.  The  Agency (FRA) provides evidence-based advice to EU and national decision makers so as to inform debates, policies and laws on fundamental rights.

The survey covered experiences in daily living, discrimination, violence and harassment and rights awareness.  It is a huge amount of data and it provides very important information on the experiences of LGBT people across Europe.

Results indicated that half of all respondents indicated that they had been discriminated against or harassed because of their sexual orientation in the previous year. 60% of respondents said they would not report incidents because they felt that nothing would be done. 2 out of 3 LGBT respondents were hiding or disguising being LGBT at school.

Across all areas of the survey transgender respondents recorded higher levels of actual and perceived violence, discrimination and harassment.

The results are available broken down across the 27 member states (plus Croatia.)

Some Irish statistics of note

• 57% of Irish respondents said that they avoided holding their same-sex partner’s hand in public because of a fear of being assaulted or threatened.
• 31% of Irish respondents indicated that they had been  physically/sexually attacked or threatened with violence at home or elsewhere  in the past 5 years. (EU figure was 26%)
• 74% of Irish Respondents knew there was legislation preventing discrimination in employment on the basis of sexual orientation.

The majority of respondents across the EU favoured increased visibility of LGBT issues and identity in schools, education and information for public officials on LGBT issues, recognition of same sex relationships and other targeted actions as having a positive impact on tackling discrimination and harassment.

The FRA have developed evidence based advice to member states and the European Commission (who asked for the study to be undertaken).

Included in the advice, which is summarised here, is a call for recognising and protecting victims of hate crime . This is something which the State and An Garda Siochana do not currently undertake.  There is no hate crime legislation or data gathering not only for crimes against LGBT’s but also for crimes on the basis of ethnicity and race and disability.

Minister Reilly would be advised to take all criticism on the chin. Especially when addressing the nursing union at their Annual General Meeting. Working on what the population think is his day job may not be a bad idea either.

If anyone has a copy of the advice tips @ mamanpoulet.com would love to receive it – just so we know what you’ll be doing in a social media crisis like!

Hello by the way. This thing still works

Meanwhile back at the ranch

1. Irish Government found to be breaching equality laws by not assisting older people with disabilities through the Mobility Allowance (Ombudsman’s Report) and Motorised Transport Grant (Ombudsman’s Report) . Had been told by their rights agencies for several years that they were in the wrong.

(The Mobility Allowance is a means tested monthly payment payable by the Health Service Executive (HSE). It is paid to people who are aged 16 and over and under age 66, and who have a disability and are unable to walk or use public transport and ‘who would benefit from a change in surroundings’; (for example, by financing the occasional taxi journey).

2. Government avoid issue of their illegality and discrimination for months, then admit they are in the wrong and finally say that they will have to reform scheme but don’t say how or when. They say if they were to obey the law they could not afford to do so.

3. Twenty days later they scrap scheme entirely before reviewing it so no new people including those on the ever growing waiting lists for a year and more can get it. (In their release scrapping the scheme they list info on other options for people with disabilities many of which are only accessible to people in certain areas and if people have money to pay for the services like taxis and Vantastic or if someone can come pick someone up at a time and place of the services choosing and availability. But there will not be an allowance or it will be reviewed so people won’t have the money to pay or will not be entitled to it. They even mention availability of car parking – but not how one is supposed to have a car to park in it or get a car adapted so you could get into it. )

4. Government say there will be a review for a new scheme but BEFORE the review starts or is completed tell people that already get the allowance that they will also lose the allowance (€208 per month) after 4 months.

5. So in summary Irish Government Human Rights practice: Bad enough they were discriminating against older people with disabilities but now the 5000 people who got the allowance (Total budget €10.9 million) are going to lose it and the hundreds who were on waiting lists for it are told to ‘feck off you are not getting it because Government were infringing human rights of some people who should have got it.’

The Office of the Ombudsman is ignored and now regrets the Government decision, the Equality Authority is toothless and rudderless, and the National Disability Authority – well who knows what they are doing. And oh Ireland has still not fully ratified the United Nation Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. The 1871 Lunacy Act and failure to revoke it prevents her from doing so.

Human Rights – Irish style.

It was the monthly newsletter from the Abortion Support Network, a volunteer run charity based in the UK which provides accommodation, financial assistance and confidential, non-judgemental information to women forced to travel from Ireland and pay privately for abortions in England. It is the only organisation which provides financial assistance to women travelling for termination.

I read the email whilst I watched the last few hours of the day’s hearing. Legislating for X will see abortion provided in the most limited of circumstances where women’s lives are at risk.  Several of the committee members and non members who were permitted to speak were obsessed with whether the suicidal ideation of a woman was a risk and the phrase ‘abortion as cure’ increasingly and offensively was repeated.

Whilst many of those asking questions at the Oireachtas committee hearing referred to ‘these women’, the women that were not being referred to were the 12 women a day who travel to the UK.  (Unless one remembers those women who several witnesses acknowledged were suicidal or experiencing another threat to their life or their health and who travelled to the UK and will continue to do so after legislation for the X case is passed by the Oireachtas.)

Meanwhile many other women will desperately seek assistance and will not have enough money to travel to the UK for the myriad of reasons that women choose to and have to terminate a pregnancy.

The stories of those who the Abortion Support Network helped in December include.

A single mother who planned to travelled by ferry as it was cheaper but was terrified as she’d never left the country before. She was able to borrow some of the money from friends and family and ASN was able to help her make up the shortfall.

A client who rang, frantic, as she’d been misinformed that an abortion at 12 weeks would cost £1,000. ASN was able to give accurate information on clinics and prices.

A young man who had heard someone from ASN speak at a rally in Ireland, and emailed us because his partner has become pregnant and they were seeking information about clinics and prices.

A single mother of four who had spent money on medical abortion medication that didn’t work. Despite being out of work she was then able to raise the money she needed to travel to England for an abortion. Unfortunately, she was further along in pregnancy than she had thought and, while the clinic offered to pay her accommodation for three days until they could give her another appointment, she had no one to care for her children and needed to return home. ASN was able to help her return to England to have the abortion.

A young student who had been experiencing difficulties getting the visa she needed to travel to England for an abortion. Before contacting ASN she had been so desperate that she tried a number of dangerous means to self-induce a miscarriage. After overcoming the visa problems, with a grant from ASN she was able to travel and access an abortion.

 A single mother in her early 30s who took out a loan at extortionate rates but even then was only able to afford some of the costs of travel, the procedure and child care while she was away. ASN was able to make a grant to cover the shortfall.

A woman who had previously suffered a still birth due to serious foetal anomalies. Despite using hormonal contraception to make sure she never had to go through that again she fell pregnant and turned to ASN for help.

A young student who put all her Christmas money towards the cost of flights and procedure. ASN was able to make up the difference.

ASN is not able to help all the women who contact it with financial assistance.  Those who receive grants have them paid direct to clinics.  No matter what happens this year in Ireland women will continue to experience crisis pregnancies and choose to terminate them.  We cannot continue to forget about them or just ‘accept’ that they travel to the UK  ‘so that’s ok then’.

I make a monthly donation to ASN so that women in financial crisis facing crisis pregnancies can be helped to decide themselves what they want to do during that crisis.  It’s not ‘ok’ that women living in Ireland have that decision taken away from them because they cannot afford to travel.  I believe we need to repeal the 8th amendment and respect women’s rights to choose.  Continuing to refer to women whose lives are at risk and all women who are are in crisis and seeking termination for whatever reason as ‘these women’ will not make them disappear.  Ignoring them won’t either.

 There are many things that we young women want for ourselves, and for one another. Some of us have got futures mapped out; others leap head-first into the unknown. The coming years look bright, and sometimes frightening. Possibilities are ripe and inviting; promises of new adventures beckon.

Sometimes though, things are not quite right for us still. Sometimes, in the midst of the melee, and the hustle to find our way, we are left searching for the words to pinpoint what is out of sync. And sometimes, when we do find them, we are made to feel silly and hysterical for it. Irish women have it good, we are told; you have got nothing to complain about.

But sometimes, this is not our experience, and we still find ourselves limited; confined by projections of who we are or should be; what we should do or want; whom we should love; how we should act.

Feminism has a lot to do with choices, and women’s right to make their own. It opposes the denial of choice to women in all its guises. It thwarts efforts to make us feel less capable, less worthy, less dependable-on. It categorically rejects misogyny and stereotypes, wherever they may appear, and anything or anyone that tries to tell us that we are not enough. It tells us that we should never be afraid to stand up and discuss the issues that are important to us, and that no-one has the right to tell us that these are not legitimate.

Some try to place the blame on women and girls for the inequalities that still exist. “Women are their own worst enemy,” they say. But in the Y Factor, we know this could not be further from the truth. We are not enemies; we are friends and allies, and it is for these reasons that the project came into being.

The Y Factor is an initiative for young people to work together towards equality for women, and a project of the National Women’s Council of Ireland. ‘Youth voices for women’s equality’ is our by-line, reminding us that our voices being young, does not mean that our thoughts are less valid. Our opinions matter, and we have come together to support one another in expressing them, to find the words to talk about things that we may not have found the space to talk about before.

We claim our input into discussions which directly concern our lives and futures. We demand respect for our diversity. We say no to the commodification of our sexuality. Together we reject pressures to act in certain ways, present ourselves in certain ways, use our bodies to certain ends.

The energy generated by the project in the women involved so far is invigorating. There is real appetite for what we represent. Young women are once again realising in greater numbers that it will not do to leave our fate resting in the hands of those who do not trouble themselves to seek out our perspectives or value our experiences. We must take our futures into our own hands, and find support and solidarity with one another to take charge and find our own way. We, all of us women and girls, can’t and won’t stand for others telling us what we should think and feel about things that affect our lives.

But we embrace the possibilities of what we can achieve when we come together, realising our potential side by side. We embrace the brilliance brimming over in each and every young woman. This space is ours, to make of it what we want. If you are a young woman with energy to share, we are waiting for you to join the movement. The Y Factor is for you, and wants you to be involved in any way that you can. We are only just getting started here, on what already promises to be quite the adventure; we hope you won’t be missing out.

If you’d like to know more about the Y Factor, you can contact the Y Factor Team by phoning 01-878 7248 or emailing elvaoc@nwci.ie or lauram@nwci.ie.  You can also find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter and, in the New Year, visit our new website.

I’ve been saying a lot to myself in my head in the weeks that have passed. It’s better staying there than here to be honest.  However do go read DoctorFive on Cedar Lounge for a pointer as to what I’ve also been thinking about regarding the Punch and Judy show in Dáil Eireann and attacks on media and social media and dissent from politicians.

While I get my brain in order if you have any reports, leaks, tips, stories, ideas, guest posts, events you think I would be interested in covering online or attending please let me know at tips @ mamanpoulet.com.

Back to the grindstone in more ways than one.

The aim of Government here is to include clarity and legal certainty in relation to determining whether a termination of pregnancy is permissible in cases where there is a real and substantial risk to the life, as distinct from the health, of a woman as a result of that pregnancy. The process will also take full account of the equal right of life of the unborn child. An extensive debate on this sensitive and complex issue will take place in the New Year.

 

Today in the defence of the cut to Respite Care grant for those caring for people with disabilities and older people Minister Joan Burton cited a €20 million increase in the amount of funds paid to carers in the past year. That is there are more people in receipt of carers benefits now then there were this time last year.

Further analysis of this might see that the lack of housing supports for people with disabilities, fewer personal assistant and home help hours, slow processing of fair care applications and the high levels of unemployment and need for income into a family all have an impact on the numbers in receipt of the payment. I want to explore further the role of care in Irish society and recent history in the development of structures to support care and those cared for.

People with disabilities and older people are living longer. Institutionalisation is no longer seen as the way to ‘deal’ with or hide disability or infirmity related to old age. Warehousing and hiding those with disabilities is in the majority of cases no longer occurring. The role of the church in providing care for people with disabilities has also diminished.  Instead the state introduced measures for people with disabilities and older people to be cared for at home by relatives.  Measures which see adult children receiving personal care by their parents and having no say in if they want it to happen, expectations are placed on parents who may no longer wish to or be able to deliver that care. Those discussions are never had. I know many people who remain in their family home because they are not allowed consider other options because of either financial considerations due to carers payments or because it is thought the best place for them is their family home. They do not have the same choices as their sibling  or expectations of independence or individuality.  There are often no other choices that can be made.

More than €750million is paid to people who provide family care for others. Those being cared for are not asked if they want to be cared for by a relative and beyond the medical information sent with the forms for assessment nobody inspects the care given. (Means testing means that many families are not entitled to carers benefits and allowances, many families with children with significant disabilities receive domiciliary care allowance and the respite care grant only.)

In terms of vulnerable adults in Ireland we have no legislative base to protect them or for the state to step in where they are being neglected or are not happy where or how they are living. (There will shortly be mandatory reporting regarding sexual abuse of vulnerable adults )

With no support to turn to and no residential options available families provide care out of necessity and love and duty or combinations of all three. However the state has ignored the place of the cared for in the planning of services and supports. The failure to provide rights to supports and independence for people with disabilities in particular has meant that their voice is not heard in public discourse. Instead they are referred to as the ‘most vulnerable’, wheeled out on protests and the subject of pity pieces in print and broadcast media. There has been no analysis by the media of the waiting lists for residential supports, housing waiting lists, lack of needs assessment or knowledge about the people who do require care and support to live their lives as people with disabilities in Ireland.

The state moved from relying on religious bodies to paying voluntary organisations to provide care and now family members. The responsibilities, such as they are, of government departments are spread across several with little planning and co-ordination. Disability is still seen as a health rather than a social support issue – services for people with disabilities are still funded by the Department of Health, whilst social welfare payments come from the Department of Social Protection. If the services are cut or completely unavailable and then the social welfare payments are also cut this means that many vulnerable adults and their families are facing the cumulative effects of cuts and no one minister is taking responsibility and none of them really talk to each other about the impact or conduct an impact assessment of these cuts.  In short we have spent an awful lot of time talking about money and cuts but little time at all talking about quality of life and choice in living that life.

In the coming years we will see further expectations placed on families and removed from people with disabilities and older people through an over inflated ‘rights’ gaze. Day services are being closed either through cuts to services or because they are seen as not the right way to provide supports to those requiring care or support. They are not being replaced by individualised or community based supports.

And the politicians continue to get up on the feet to talk about their local service and how wonderful they are in providing services for people in need, they continue to object to cuts to payments to those caring.  Whilst I abhor  cuts to services and supports it is wrong that we have slowed the pace of reform so much or completely ignored the way in which people with disabilities and older people are supported.

The state has no expectations of people with disabilities beyond paralympianism or activation into jobs because ‘they aren’t that disabled at all’.  Considering the majority of people with disabilities are not paralympians and require some form of assistance, (although many paralympians require support too) our right to a voice, choice and inclusion  is too much trouble for the collective brain cells when it’s easier to jump up and down about a cut to the poor unfortunates. Austerity is ending rights before they can ever be expressed.

Minister for State with responsibility for Disability and Older people Kathleen Lynch released a press statement.

The Minister said that she is very mindful of the enormous challenges facing Government and the Health Services. In such circumstances she also particularly welcomed the commitment to restore the core community services of home help, home care packages and personal assistant hours. She said

“Community Services are the services that keep people well at home, where they want to be, and out of hospital and residential care. A key element of our overall health reform plan is to keep and treat people at the lowest level of complexity. In moving towards this model of health care provision, community services will continue to play a key role”.

It’s not clear if people who have lost hours will have their hours restored or, equally significantly, if the way in which hours of support are assessed will be changed. In the last few weeks the HSE has been cutting hours of support based on assessments which stop home care  helping with so called non essential tasks like shopping, cooking, cleaning, laundry, organising a household.  It has become a service of minutes rather than hours.

Does this restoration of budget mean that people will get help with these vital tasks?  And will Personal Assistance continue to mean supporting the philosophy of independent living so that people with disabilities can have people to help them attend employment, education and have social lives.

There were two cuts to community support budgets in 2012 in January and also in September.  Again it’s not clear which cut has been restored.  There were no figures.  From the cuts experienced this year the national figures published and the experience of the reality of local implementation are very different things.

The ‘restoration’ of the community supports budget also will not help the many older people or people with disabilities who have no service, who never had a service, indeed the many who are in acute hospital settings (690 people in August before the second set of cuts – some for more than 6 months waiting ) and would like to return home.  Those on waiting lists for services whether in the community or needing residential supports are not being heard in this recession.

The Ministers would not provide information on the HSE budget for 2013 and it has not been published. So we do not know for example what the aids and appliances budget for 2013 will be. We also do not know what the cut to the overall Disability budget is. For those who require respite there is no information on whether there will be any reveral of the massive cuts to services. (This is seperate to the 20% cut to respite grants paid to carers)

We do know that there must be a €900 million cut to the HSE budget in 2013.  €900 million.  And if hospitals overspend the budget on all other aspects of health – ie primary care and community support gets cut. There is no ringfencing of that money from being taken and spent elsewhere. The cost of homehelp hours saves the 500k per night cost of acute hospital care.

Those on medical cards face a 200% increase in prescription charges and also many items are removed from the Medical card scheme entirely and have to be paid for in full.

Watching the press conference there were many questions but few answers and it will take several weeks if not months before we are clearer on what this will really mean for people with disabilities.  For those who have no services or need more supports then what they have they may never get answers or even questions asked.  There will be lots of bandwagon jumping about the ‘most vulnerable’ but little reflection on the reality, the administration, the decision making and priorities of those who make decisions. The Ministers may commit to inclusion and equality but how it is being delivered locally through funded agencies and what is happening in the daily lives of people with disabilities is still not being heard or listened to.