Allow me to share my thoughts regarding the proposed Disability Hub as the message is not yet at all clear. All I can gather from news snippets is that it is an area large enough to build a suitable pool, gym, premises for respite care services and for NGOs that cater for people with disabilities, a block or two for residential flats suitable for some 60 disabled people and spaces for retail shops or catering establishments. If this is the case, then I agree with former KNPD chairman Joe Camilleri that this intended hub, which may be motivated by the right intentions, will be a step backwards, not forward, for disabled people as a whole.
I fear that once this is established as an intended one-stop-shop, it would actually be a large residential unit with its 60 occupants as a focal point; it will end up creating an isolated area for disabled people where they will function in almost complete isolation, since all services and facilities would end up in a dumping hub rather than a disability hub. Are all the existing services and facilities such as day care centres and respite services at Mtarfa and the Independent living centre at Hal Far to be dismantled and set up in this proposed Hub? If this is the case, it would be a waste of taxpayers' money.
As a person who is now wheelchair bound due to a spinal cord injury and has lived on both sides of the divide, I know from experience that our non-disabled peers do not care to mingle in an area where there are a large number of people with disabilities of all sorts unless they are employees, and with all due respect neither do people with disabilities themselves. I know quite a few people with physical disabilities who know what they want out of life: they want to mingle on board an ordinary route bus and at regular bus stops, in mainstream schools, at work places and at the usual, popular places of entertainment.
I know a lot more people with disabilities, especially people with an intellectual impairment who deep down in their hearts and minds have the same wishes and desire. But they are often strongly, and wrongly, influenced by their loved ones to create a future for themselves in an isolated, sheltered home where they are encouraged to mingle with ‘their own kind’. Understandably, parents often fear that their disabled offspring will experience abuse and this is why they prefer custodial care to independent living for their children. The government should be addressing the desires of disabled people and the parents' concerns, and not satisfy the latter group only. NGOs run by non-disabled people but speak on behalf of people with intellectual impairments press hard for premises with this social perspective and they have a strong lobby with the authorities and hence this proposed hub. I now live at Akwarell, one of the homes in the community established by Dar tal-Providenza; my zest for life has now increased and my family’s mind is at rest. Living within the community at Qawra, my neighbours got to know me for who I am and not stereotyped as ‘that poor guy in the wheelchair’. Thanks to the brave decision taken by the Dar tal-Providenza to set up small homes within the community and not taking fast solutions by housing large groups in residential blocks, in spite of the fact that their financial resources is the generosity of the public and divine providence.
Yes indeed we should tap taxpayers and EU funding (while we still have the opportunity) for a 12 million mark, but to create further community homes as a way forward. We should be investing in more and better trained carers, possibly through the setting up of a training centre, to professionally train carers to work with people with physical impairments, with people with different levels of intellectual impairments and people with challenging behaviour. Carers are hard to come by and they should be trained professionally.
The government’s proposal measure of covering half the costs for those elderly people who opt to employ live-in carers is an excellent initiative and it should also be applicable to people with disabilities to encourage every option of living within the community.
I also challenge the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, the Minister of Social Policy and his shadow minister to spend a day in a wheelchair to experience the hardships and social struggles we face. Moreover, I urge for a serious constructive debate regarding this proposed hub.
Tonio Mercieca
Qawra