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Keywords: Carers

  • AUSTRALIA

    Relationships key to mental illness treatment

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 10 October 2013
    9 Comments

    Although medical and psychological discoveries and better regulation have improved the treatment of mental illness in Australia, the need still outweighs the resources available. People with mental illnesses need others to help them build and develop relationships if they are to thrive. But the same trends that help the better treatment of people also tell against the crucial building of relationships.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Philosophy of falling

    • Ailsa Piper
    • 18 September 2013
    9 Comments

    Waters fall. So does night. We fall asleep, sometimes because staying awake is too painful. Soldiers fall, and we mourn them. They are boys, many of them, so fall-able. We fall into love, and out of it again, like it is some dark hole. We forget that love should be about rising, because we have fallen back onto cliché. We go through life as though we will always be upright, and when we fall, it hurts.

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  • RELIGION

    Aged care and the business of gift

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 09 May 2013
    9 Comments

    In our care of the aged, not only their health and security are at stake but also their self-respect and dignity. It is impossible not to sympathise with the argument that the high skills this requires from carers should be better remunerated. But in the business of business and remuneration, love is the skill that dares not speak its name.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The everyday courage of carers

    • Helen Sage
    • 03 April 2013
    14 Comments

    In 1999 my 22-year-old daughter sustained a head injury in a motor vehicle accident. She now contends with the use of only one normally functioning limb amid multiple disabilities. The 'support' provided by family carers is said to save the nation billions of dollars annually. But carers give much more than support.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Tax justice for unpaid carers

    • Michael Mullins
    • 04 February 2013
    8 Comments

    Last week the political leaders were brawling over assistance payments for middle-class Australians, with Tony Abbott claiming to be promoting 'tax justice for families'. A new Human Rights Commission report has shown how our super and tax systems fail unpaid carers, who are needed to sustain many families. But not the ones whose votes matter most.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Euthanasing the disabled

    • Moira Byrne Garton
    • 29 June 2012
    6 Comments

    Earlier this month a Canadian Supreme Court effectively legalised physician-assisted euthanasia. While there is a general perception that those opposed to euthanasia do so on religious grounds, many people with disabilities oppose euthanasia because they believe it is bad policy that denies their right to live. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Poverty's skanky tarts

    • Barry Gittins
    • 06 June 2012
    11 Comments

    Poverty is the unpaid rent of 200 years of colonisation. Poverty leaves a kid to her own solitary devices in the corner of a one-bedroom unit. It is pensioners eating canned excuses for a decent meal. Poverty is what happens when I don't care about you and you don't give a toss about me.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Fund facts about living with disability

    • Patricia Mowbray
    • 18 April 2012
    5 Comments

    At the end of each day, one of our three adult sons will ask, 'What's on tomorrow?' They don't ask this lightly. They have Down syndrome. Whether they participate in the community, go to work or remain at home depends on what funding we can access.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Disability reform shows Labor has a heart

    • Moira Byrne Garton
    • 12 August 2011
    11 Comments

    Julia Gillard this week described access to disability services as a 'cruel lottery', and declared support for proposed reforms. Her response demonstrates compassion and goodwill during a time when many citizens have expressed disgust at Labor's treatment of asylum seekers.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Aboriginal students' school shock

    • Brian McCoy
    • 04 April 2011
    28 Comments

    I recently spent time with a group of students from a remote community who had been at school down south. After a fight involving other Aboriginal students, they wanted to go home. Senator Jenny Macklin has suggested punishing Aboriginal parents who do not support their children attending school.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Levelling the disability hierarchy

    • Moira Byrne Garton
    • 03 December 2010
    15 Comments

    It can be difficult to communicate with a person who does not use speech, to interact with someone who requires high levels of assistance, or engage with someone who lacks control of their sounds or movements. Many such people are simply avoided, ignored and rejected.

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  • RELIGION

    Hung parliament no place to be ham-fisted on euthanasia

    • Frank Brennan
    • 21 September 2010
    27 Comments

    Now that we have a hung parliament, Greens leader Senator Bob Brown wants to agitate the issue of euthanasia once again. But a hung parliament will not have the time and resources to consider these complex issues in its early days.

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