IHC Welcomes Possible Enquiry

IHC Welcomes Possible Enquiry

IHC supports the comments of Cindy Kiro, Children's Commissioner, following last Thursday's jury verdict of not guilty for the man charged with killing his disabled baby. Kiro stated, "Any investigation would consider all deaths and serious accidents around disabled children".
IHC welcomes this and views an enquiry as an opportunity to do more for families who are raising children with impairments. A wider ranging inquiry could expose gaps and make recommendations for changes to policies and practices and thus avoid parents getting to the stage of considering harm for their child or themselves.

Many children are born with impairments and families require easily accessible and ongoing consistent support to have an ordinary life. Often families have to battle the systems to get their children's rights and support needs met.

IHC acknowledges this and provides an Advocacy service whose team has an ongoing job advocating systemic changes to improve the lives of families and adults with intellectual disabilities. The service continues to receive calls from distressed families who daily battle systems, structures, policies and practices that do not work for them.

Cindy Johns Advocate and Parent comments "One family can be having issues with primary health care, the education system and access to disability support services all at once, put that along with parenting, working and raising a family it's a lot to deal with. It would be great to take this tragic event and learn from it and improve the lives of the families who are raising their children with impairments. My hope is that one day there was no longer a need for an advocacy service such as ours but I can't see that in the near or even distant future".

IHC will be contacting the Office of the Childrens Commissioner to offer their support to the possible inquiry.

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