TRANSCRIPT
FAMILY AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
Inquiry into social inclusion and Victorians with a disability
Melbourne — 5 May 2014
Members
Mrs A. Coote
Ms B. Halfpenny
Mr J. Madden
Mrs J. Powell
Ms D. Ryall
Chair: Ms D. Ryall
Deputy Chair: Ms B. Halfpenny
Staff
Executive Officer: Dr J. Bush
Research Officer: Ms V. Finn
Administrative Officer: Ms N. Tyler
Witnesses
Mrs E. Harris, Executive Officer,
Ms E. Elbaum, Board member, and
Dr P. Graves, Board member, STAR Victoria.
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The CHAIR — Welcome, and thank you for your time in appearing today before the committee for its
inquiry into social inclusion and Victorians with a disability. There are just a few preliminaries before we begin.
As outlined to you in the guide provided by the secretariat, all evidence taken by the committee at this hearing is
subject to the provisions of the Parliamentary Committees Act 2003 and other relevant legislation, and it attracts
parliamentary privilege. However, any comments you make outside of this hearing are not afforded that
privilege. Proceedings are recorded by our Hansard team, and you will be sent a proof copy of the transcript so
you can make any factual or grammatical corrections.
We will now move on to your presentation for which we have allowed 15 minutes, and then we will proceed to
questions. Please introduce yourselves to the committee, and then we will proceed.
Mrs HARRIS — I am Esther Harris. I am the executive officer of STAR. I am going to briefly introduce
STAR and say what we do. Our presentation here is not going to take 15 minutes, because we feel that we
would benefit more, and so would you, by engaging with the committee — by you asking questions and going
backwards and forwards.
STAR is an advocacy organisation for people with an intellectual disability and their families. We have been
around for 44 years. STAR was started by parents who at that stage were living in what was then known as the
Kew Cottages. Those parents and family members got together and realised they could not change anything for
their own sons and daughters unless they got together and made changes for others. It had its beginnings in that
collaborative, shared social justice area.
We are funded through the Office for Disability advocacy program through the Department of Human Services.
Our work is mostly individual advocacy, although we use our individual advocacy to look at systemic
advocacy, so the issues that come up in our individual advocacy are what guide us in terms of the systemic
advocacy. Our membership is people with an intellectual disability, parents and family members and people in
the community who share STAR’s vision and mission statement in terms of working so that people with
intellectual disability are seen as equal participating members of the community.
In any given year — this relates to our submission — about 40 per cent to 50 per cent of our advocacy work,
which varies from year to year but is always at least 40 per cent and is sometimes as much as 50 per cent of the
individual advocacy, is related to education. We have a firm grounding in that area. That is pretty reflective of
the other disability advocacy groups within our network. They may not have the 40 or 50, but education issues,
particularly at the schooling level, form a very significant part of the advocacy that family members, students
and individuals seek, and as I said our individual advocacy informs our systemic advocacy. Certainly in relation
to individual advocacy that has taken us down the road of responding to the disability discrimination standards
review. We put forward a report, as part of the shadow report into the UN convention — obviously we are a
small organisation and cannot do the whole thing — particularly around education.
Our advocacy focus takes a human rights approach and uses a social model. That takes the focus away from
differences which create barriers and limitations to a focus on common gifts, talents and abilities. As you will
have read in our submission, we believe that inclusive education is the foundation and a fundamental part of
achieving community inclusion. We are not suggesting for one moment that if we get inclusive education right,
all the rest of it will fall into place, but it is the starting point. It is a fact that all young people from an early age
to 17 or so will be in schooling — in education. It is mandated; it is legislated. We have an expectation as a
community and as a society that young people will get not only the academic stimulus they need to set them up
both currently and for their future life but also the social skills — making friends, keeping friends, peer support,
having a sense of belonging and finding a place in the world. They are all clichéd statements but they are pretty
fundamental to what we all strive for. That is why we have taken this focus in this brief on the importance of
inclusive education. I am now going to hand over to Dr Graves.
Dr GRAVES — I will try to be brief. I am here as a member of the STAR board. I am also a paediatrician
who has spent his professional life looking after children with disabilities. I have been in that field for 36 years,
and I am head of a unit dedicated to that purpose at Monash Children’s hospital. We have given you a brief
summary headed ‘Milestones in inclusive education advocacy’ which summarises some of the key legal
advocacy and academic documents supporting inclusive education. I do not think we need to convince you that
inclusive education is the right way to go. The issue really is: why is it not happening?
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We used to be leaders here in Victoria back in 1974. In the education and handicapped children actwe said that
all children, regardless of their level of ability were educable, and that was pretty progressive. Then in 1984 in
the review of educational services for children with disabilities, we again in Victoria — and it was more you —
produced a report that said that all children regardless of ability should have the right to go to mainstream
schools, and that was very progressive. But we now have more children excluded today than we had back in
1984. We have about twice as many children in Victoria excluded from mainstream schools — that is as a
percentage of the total — than we had back then in 1984. For some reason, we have gone backwards. We
believe that Wordsworth got it right when he said, ‘The child is father of the man’. Children implement as
adults the experiences they have as children. That is why we are so passionate about the issue, quite apart from
the fact that we think it is better for the children.
We have given you a summary of all the documents, so I am not going to say anything more about that. The
scientific literature really is unequivocal. Dr Bob Jackson’s review of all the articles in that area leaves no
element of doubt, I believe. It is fairly clear cut that there are no benefits to segregated educational facilities and
there are small but definite benefits to children going to mainstream facilities. Those benefits are both for the
children with disabilities and for their non-disabled peers who have more positive attitudes towards individual
difference and are more likely to create an inclusive society.
Ms ELBAUM — I am Emmy Elbaum, and I am a member of the STAR board. My focus will be on the
very critical role, as Esther said, that education has in setting the foundations for social inclusion, but at the
classroom and practical level, my experience having been in independent, Catholic and regular schools as a
consultant with the Ministry of Education. I have had the opportunity of working with and seeing children in
schools and working with teachers, but I have also been a parent advocate for the last 30-plus years, supporting
families in mainstream schools and making that work.
I am addressing particularly the role of communities and examples of innovative strategies that we have alluded
to in our original submission. The examples of innovative approaches that successfully increase social inclusion
for young people actually remove the barriers and limitations created by organisational structures so that
exclusion, as Philip alluded to, is participating in some parallel special society — special people doing special
things in special places — in an education system that begins with the exclusion of children and youth from
their neighbourhood schools, friends, community and even future work opportunities, despite the best intentions
of caring and committed staff.
If we look at some of the strategies that do work and are used, but not extensively, it is things like using our
most underutilised resources, the students in the classroom, to assist in a variety of different ways, and, if I can
be very practical, it is things like persisting with problem-solving.
If I could just give you a quick example where a young man — who was not included in the classroom — with
disability, had his own office in the school.No other child had an office. It was not ill intentioned. It was a
regular school really wanting to do something, but he was not included in class. The barrier was the computer.
He needed to use a computer to access communication and do his notes, because he just was not able to write.
The staff and principal said, ‘We can’t put a computer in the classroom because kids will vandalise it and put all
kinds of things on it’. In a secondary school kids will vandalise it — all the barriers as to why it could not work.
I said, ‘Let’s talk to the kids; they can come up with very creative solutions’, and they did.
In all of my experience over the many years, I have trusted students. When you pose a problem to them and say,
‘How do we work this out?’, it actually can and does work, in my own experience. It is utilising the resources
that are not much utilised at the moment. It is doing things like starting friendship circles, because the one thing
we found is that friendship is a major issue for our students — how we can help friendships in classrooms using
friendship buddies, learning buddies, teamwork, creating an environment where we all look out for each other.
That does happen in schools, but it needs to be supported with additional focus on those sorts of strategies.
Truly, it is not rocket science, and every teacher can do it. As a trained teacher, I know we can do it.
Using current resources differently — I know in some countries what I think we call attendance officers can
work like the Metro Access workers in the community, where they facilitate inclusion in schools, and instead of
a punitive approach for school absences, they can be used as support. In some countries these attendance
officers are actually trained social workers, so it is the same resource but being used in a different way.
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What I am trying to focus on is not additional funds that are required but using current processes in a different
way, certainly with a focus on that community support for everybody. It is also looking at the way Koori
inclusion officers work to support students — another model that could be used among the various ways our
education department workers work within schools.
It is, for us, defining experts differently, as I said earlier, and recognising the expertise that we already have in
the schools, especially the students and the parent community, who really are the experts on their children, some
community members that are within the community, so that we are not constantly relying on outside experts
who do not know the students often, who do not know the kids, they do not know the school environments.
Often the recommendations are almost impossible to implement, because they come from an outside
perspective and do not understand the day-to-day running within the school. Inclusive practices, for me, are
really not an issue of simply more funds. It is, as I said, basically creatively problem-solving with that whole
community approach and focus.
Learning from each other: I know that we have had a lot of success with saying, ‘Look, this school is doing
really well specifically in supporting students with no oral communication who have a variety of augmentative
communication needs’.
If one school is doing it well, I know as a teacher I used to say, ‘Show me how it works, and I’ll do it’. It is
going to see that and putting those networks in place, rather than any of those outside experts. It is knowing how
to share those good practices fairly widely.
I will just race through these: gather and disseminate what works effectively; teamwork by principle teachers
across schools in relation to strategies that make for successful inclusion; and ensure that DEECD policies are
the guidelines that are adhered to, because they are excellent. There is just nobody monitoring that what is on
paper is actually actioned. From my experience the gap between what is meant to happen and what actually
does happen is fairly wide. Use technology to regain so-called unresponsive students — you have the example
where you see a kid who is just not involved in anything at a very early age of learning to read; he is totally
unresponsive. Put a similar process onto the iPad and suddenly the eyes light up and it happens. Again, it is not
rocket science; it is a way of thinking that says, ‘You can do it, and let’s get on with it’. In my experience, it is
about eliminating the TAFE courses that reteach students at 17, 18 and 19 what they have already been doing at
prep and grade 1 in a variety of other places. The same thing is being retaught, and we have not asked the
question, ‘Why aren’t we focusing on the learning and learning needs?’.It is just a repeat of what has happened
years before.
If we really want an inclusive society, it starts when children go to school and preschool with innovative
approaches that are embedded in effective teaching and learning strategies for all students so our teachers are
trained in effective learning strategies. We need to encourage them to trust themselves in being able to handle
all learners. The role of communities, which is the second bit, is to end the isolation that results from
segregation, which I have alluded to before. The strategy is to have a whole community responsibility. We have
an example, as we have put in our submission, of the South Australian volunteering partnerships. It is about
building friendships and relationships. We all need to be included and nurtured. That happens in life. Like
everybody else, the differences are not so big. All children need the same thing, and that has to happen all
together.
We need to change our language. ‘Special-needs’ language sets people apart, and it needs to change with a
recognition that every student has gifts and talents to share. As Esther said, diversity can only enrich all of us.
Teaching relationship skills is part of every curriculum in every school and applies equally to all students, so we
do not have to go to a special setting to be taught skills in social relationships. The assumption that seems pretty
self-evident but does not seem to happen in my experience is that we assume competence for all students and
build on that.
The CHAIR — Thank you very much. I will ask the first question. You mentioned teacher training briefly
towards the end of your contribution. I wondered to what extent teaching degrees include disability, the nature
of disabilities and perhaps the applications for assisting people with a disability in school?
Ms ELBAUM — From my own experience, Victoria University has a major focus on inclusion and
inclusive practices in its teacher education program, and students do go into schools and get some quite practical
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experience. Having had special ed. training, I feel fairly confident in being able to say — and to have the
evidence for it — that some of the other courses are more focused on the concept and myth that as a classroom
teacher you can teach ordinary kids but you need special ed. to teach these kids with additional needs. That is
just not the case. It is a myth that is perpetrated for any number of reasons. As a primary-trained teacher, if I
focus, I can teach all kids with additional support where I need it, when I need it, from whomever. I do not need
to have special needs training. When you focus on the disability rather than the learner it sets us off on a
different path. It is saying, ‘You are so different that I don’t as a teacher have the expertise, so you’ll have to go
to another school where those people have the expertise’.
The CHAIR — To summarise, Victoria University seems to cover it well, but you are not convinced that
other courses really do?
Mrs HARRIS — No, it seems to me that in some of them — and I am not privy to what happens in every
one — the general sort of thing is that some of the disability stuff is an elective, an add-on, or it is a six-week
thing that is seen as the special stuff. It is not the whole thing. I am reminded of a terrific example. It is not
about teaching, but Monash University used to run a thing in terms of its first year medical students. In the very
first week even before those students had begun it ran this hypothetical and it invited parents, stakeholders and
the Office of the Public Advocate, and from the very beginning the focus of it was to see the person with a
disability as a whole — that is, not as a patient and then all the little bits of disability aside. It was the person as
a human being, as a whole; and it is similar to that sort of view. If you divide teaching up into the gifted, and
children from non-English-speaking backgrounds and whatever, we get these specialised compartments. That is
not to say that there is not special support that might be needed in certain circumstances, but it ought not to lead
down the segregation trail. Segregation should not equate with special support or special needs, and too often it
does.
The CHAIR — Dr Graves, you mentioned the difference in terms of specialised education versus
mainstream education. Do parents sometimes choose segregated education for their children, and given the
research that you referred to how do you feel about that?
Dr GRAVES — The rules are that parents choose, and since 1984 the rules have been that parents choose
the school for their child with a disability. The reality is it is not a level playing field. Your average parent of a
child with a severe disability goes along to a mainstream school and they get a variety of receptions. Fairly often
that is, ‘Come and look at my stairs’, ‘Children can be cruel’, ‘The gaps widen’ — that sort of information from
the mainstream school — ‘We’re not trained’ and ‘There are other special schools down the road that have
expertise in this area’. Then they go to the special school and it has relatively small numbers, it is usually a
modern building and it all looks lovely, and they are told this is where their child should be. It is not a level
playing field. The 1984 report expected the vast majority of parents to choose mainstream schools, and they
discussed what the future would be for the staff at the special schools in that light, but it did not happen. That is
a problem for us.
The CHAIR — Therefore to level the playing field, what would your perspective be?
Dr GRAVES — First of all on the evidence about it not being a level playing field. There were three major
reviews of special education in 2012: one by the Auditor-General, one by the Human Rights and Equal
Opportunities Commission and one by the commonwealth people looking at the disability standards for
education. All of those documented this lack of a level playing field and people being put off going to
mainstream schools.
The system has got to be a bit Machiavellian. It is a bit like what happened with institutions. You will be aware
that we had 3500 people in residential institutions back in about 1980, and that number is now down to less than
200. That is because the government and government agencies got strategic, and they did not give people free
choice. If they had given people free choice, I suspect they would have twice as many in residential care. What
they did was say right up front, ‘This is the wrong model. It’s not good for the people,it’s not good for us as a
community and it has got to change’; and they changed it. I think that leadership in the disability services area
has been superb, but it has not happened in the educational field.
Mrs HARRIS — As Emmy says, the education department policy is good, but there is what happens
between the policy and what happens in the school, and it is different in individual schools of course. As an
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advocacy organisation, we do not very often get to hear about schools that are doing it well until we beaver
around out there. We are almost a point of last resort or contact. One of the things that comes through clearly to
me, and I have sat there, at many meetings is that all children should be welcomed into their school. If there is a
parent going to this school, welcome them and then sit down and work out what it is, whether your child has a
disability or not — whatever — we need to do in this school to address their children’s needs. That welcoming
doesn’t always happen.
Sometimes I find some of the most difficult stuff to deal with. Sometimes if it is openly hostile, it is easier,
because what you are seeing is what you are getting and you can come back, but some of it is the stuff their
parents are told, such as ‘We really can’t have your child here. We couldn’t offer them what they wanted. If you
really cared about your child, then you would send them down the road’. It is that stuff. The welcoming should
be just the way it is — that is, when a parent or parents go to a school with a child, ‘Welcome to our school.
Let’s now start off’. That does not happen; the barriers go up very often for kids with disabilities, particularly
for kids with intellectual disabilities. I think we are better — we are not good at it, but we are getting much
better — at dealing with the physical sorts of stuff. Yes, schools can do ramps and those sorts of things and not
have the library up on the first floor, but intellectual disability is still confronting for many people— and that is
the area that we are directly involved in .
Ms ELBAUM — Having had the opportunity to review the curriculum in special schools — I have to make
it very clear I am talking about systems, not people, in special schools — I have had the opportunity of going in
and having a look at it. My question has been — because I go in and think, ‘What a lovely place’, as would
parents — what happens in a special school that cannot happen in any regular school? No-one has been able to
give me that answer, because anything that happens in that different setting can happen with support in a regular
school. There is nothing in any of the shape, in the support, in the curriculum, in any of it. That for me is the
only way all students do get a fair opportunity of having access to a curriculum that then leads on to that
opportunity for further education or further employment opportunities, which sometimes is very difficult in
other ways, in other circumstances.
Ms HALFPENNY — In terms of education, we are talking about preschool, primary, secondary and
tertiary, whether it is university or TAFE. Is it just an ad hoc thing? Can you say this school does better than this
within, say, primary education? Or can you say there is a better approach in a particular level, whether it is
preschool or TAFE? For example, I know that TAFE had factored into their funding community service
obligations, which also include support for those with a disability. This leads me to your comment that you do
not really need any extra funding to be inclusive. Where does it work best in terms of each level?
Mrs HARRIS — Certainly from our perception as an advocacy organisation, very often — that is a
quantitative statement — parents choose the mainstream setting for primary school. Very often what happens in
grade 5 and 6 is off-putting. That wonderful phrase ‘the gap widens’ comes into it, and parents are told about
this gap widening — that is, the kids have been fine in primary school, but when they get to secondary school
the gap widens. It actually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The gap does widen because the kids are forced
into segregated settings away from their peers in those really formative adolescent years, which is probably
when — rightly or wrongly — our kids learn from their peers, but that is all part of the growing up stuff. The
gap widens, but it widens in many ways. The gap widens for all of us academically. We all could look at what
we are good at. For example, with maths the gap widened for me after about year 8. For others it is literature.
Ms HALFPENNY — Do you think you need more resources, the older the child gets or the higher the level
of education?
Mrs HARRIS — No, not necessarily.I think it is an assumption, and it is based particularly on the academic
sort of stuff — ‘You won’t be able to do the VCE’ and those sorts of things. Schooling needs to be more than
just about the academic thing. Of course it is about that academic stuff, but it is where we learn all the social
stuff — the friendships, belonging, all of the things I talked about in the beginning.
From my perspective, if you look at the figures, a significant number of young people go into a special or a
segregated setting from a mainstream school. These are children who have been in a mainstream school for their
primary years, and it is very difficult at the other end if you are already in a segregated setting, believe me, to try
and get out of a segregated setting into a mainstream school. It is possible with a lot of effort at the primary level
but terribly difficult at the secondary level because of the presumptions and assumptions we have about
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secondary schooling, which is probably targeted much more at what we are expecting kids to come out with at
the end of it — their certificates and the VCEs and all of that.
Ms ELBAUM — Can I give an example of where I have seen it work really well across the education
spectrum? The preschool area has a huge focus on inclusion, and it is happening again now where it had
stopped for a little while. Kids are coming into primary schools very well prepared and supported. The schools
where it is really working well are schools where kids do not have to fit into the school. The schools are flexible
enough to say, ‘What are your needs and how can we tailor that curriculum to suit your needs?’.There is not
that, ‘You fit into this. You either fail or you gain’. That is where I think extra resources do not help. It would
not matter how much resources you put in.
Ms HALFPENNY — In terms of teachers’ time and things like that, is there competition about time and
things like that?
Ms ELBAUM — But in real terms we are meeting the needs of all kids. No kids are the same in any
classroom. We are trying to say as a classroom teacher, ‘How do I organise my activities to meet this kid’s
needs — the non-English-speaking kid, the no-experience-in-school kid who is now in grade 6 and who does
not have to fit into the curriculum?’.That thinking goes into secondary. We are seeing secondary schools do
amazing things with just tailoring and again that thinking, ‘This is what you need, and how can we make it work
for you so that you are learning all the time and there is a future in sight for you?’.
Again from my experience and moving to TAFE, you have the TAFEs that are tailoring their courses to meet
VET, VCAL, the whole range of further learning opportunities that fit in with what kids are passionate about
and what then leads onto further work. If we had those elements right through the educational process, we
would be working towards that inclusive process. When we say additional resources, in some places it takes
community members. If you go to the western suburbs, you have got a variety of businesses involved in
supporting schools with breakfasts. So, in that sense, yes, but it is not focused on additional individual aid
support to an individual student.
Ms HALFPENNY — I see. I understand you have also had a bit of involvement in housing. Is that
advocacy or — —
Mrs HARRIS — Yes.As I indicated, around 40 per cent is education. I suppose the other major part is
around what you might call disability services, and that encompasses a whole range of things. It might include
accommodation and support services such as community residential units and those things. I am not sure what
you — —
Ms HALFPENNY — Do you do advocacy in that area?
Mrs HARRIS — Yes.
Ms HALFPENNY — Do you look at alternatives or different types of housing?
Mrs HARRIS — The individual advocacy situation is dictated by what the individual — —
Ms HALFPENNY — In terms of getting a place for someone?
Mrs HARRIS — Yes, it might be looking — —
Ms HALFPENNY — Okay, sorry. I did not understand.
Mrs HARRIS — As the population ages, one of the things we often get, particularly with somebody
perhaps with what you might call a mild disability who has been able to live at home but has ageing parents, is
that the parents wonder what is going to happen to their son or daughter when they are no longer around. Very
often, of course, nothing happens until such time as either or both of the parents become unable to care for their
child, and then it becomes a crisis situation. We try in our systemic work and in some of the workshops the
things we might to do with parents and family members to get them to think about some of that planning earlier
on so that it does not become a crisis situation and you are not having to support somebody who is not only
dealing with the loss of a parent, which is difficult in all of our lives particularly if it has been a focus, but you
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are also having to look at maybe a total physical relocation from the home. You can understand why people
become frustrated.
Disability services — some of that work is part of our advocacy. It depends on who is on the other end of the
phone — not ‘depends on’, it is dictated by what is on the other end of the phone and you never know until you
pick it up.
Mrs COOTE — Thank you very much indeed for both your written submission and your presentation
today. Can I just say at the outset that I am a huge advocate for integration.I am parliamentary secretary to Mary
Wooldridge and I get a lot of people saying things to me. These are not just parents who would be flattered by
the look of a physical location and think, ‘It looks like a nice building, and that would be nice for my children’.
These are parents who have looked into it and done a lot of research. They are often very bright parents
obviously wanting the best for their children. They are not going to be pacified by someone saying, ‘They’re not
going to be here; we want them somewhere else’.
However, they are absolutely against integrated schooling. They have often had a bad experience, and I mention
autism particularly. You look at autism and you look at these two very fierce schools of thought — the one that
is very much about integration and the other that is not. Usually the children have been bullied or there has been
some unpleasant thing and they feel it is difficult for their children. They want to have a dedicated school. How
does this fit? You must come across the same parents, the same people, and I say with all due regard that they
are not going to be told, ‘Yes, there is a place for you here; you’ve got to send your kids here’. They want the
very best for their children and they believe a segregated school is going to be the way to go. What is your
comment about this?
Mrs HARRIS — You asked Philip why parents chose schools and Philip spoke about that. Very often it is
word of mouth or they are reflecting exactly their own terrible experiences. No matter how much you believe in
something, parents should not be put in a position of having to make their children guinea pigs. But I guess our
view is pretty much that — and it sounds simplistic — if we get mainstream schools right and supporting then I
think parents — —
I often do an activity with parents of people with a disability. I ask them at the beginning, ‘If you could have
anything, what is it that you want? Now forget about what’s out there and whatever’, people do not come up
with gold-plated taps or anything; they come up with the same answer as any parent when you ask them. They
say they want their kids to be happy. They want them to grow up. They want them to have work of some sort.
They want them to have relationships, and those things. If you start from those sorts of things, I think parents
would choose. They want their kids to be with other kids — kids their own age, or whatever. They do not
necessarily want all of their friends to be kids with a disability like them. Of course they will have some friends,
just like we all do, in the mainstream.
I do not want to say simplistically, but our view is that we should focus on supporting and strengthening what is
offered in the mainstream at all of those sorts of levels in terms of the curriculum, the inclusion, the sense of
belonging. What is a really inclusive school? It is not just being there; it is a whole range of things. There are
many schools that say they are inclusive schools, but when you look into it you find that kids with disabilities do
not go to camps and excursions.
The work experience issue at year 10 is quite significant. I get quite a few calls every year. We are talking
specifically from our experience with kids with an intellectual disability. Sometimes they are excluded from
work experience programs. I guess our view is that our efforts, resources, human resources or whatever should
go into supporting and strengthening mainstream schools through teacher education, support for principals,
leadership at that sort of level. We are not suggesting that we march in the street and close special schools. We
are not naive enough to believe that we would win that, and it would be a waste of resources. But we believe
most families out there want for their kids with disabilities the same as everybody else wants for the kids
without disabilities — the ordinary, human sorts of things that we all want.
Mrs COOTE — Do you think as an interim step it would be possible for those parents who had an issue not
to take your line through the education vehicle but to strengthen the rest of the community in social inclusion so
that those children who perhaps go to a segregated school have much better additional community support to do
just the things that you said — to have friends who are not at the special school, or to be involved with sporting
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activities and other things that are in the main part of the community? Is there an opportunity to strengthen those
elements as well as perhaps going down the education line? There will be parents who say, ‘I don’t want them
to go into that area’.
Mrs HARRIS — Absolutely.
Dr GRAVES — I get this all the time. I tear my hair out; it is very difficult. But these parents are dealing
with prejudice. They do not want to use their children as battering rams — and I fully understand that — but the
reality is that that is what they are dealing with. If these children were Aboriginal or Greek or Iranian or Afghani
or whatever and were getting bullied because of that at their local schools, how long would we tolerate that for?
I would suggest 5 minutes before making a call to the principal. The principal would ring the family and say,
‘I’m sorry you got the wrong impression. Let’s start again. We’ll make sure that your child is a valued member
of our community’. Why does that not happen for children with disabilities?
Mrs COOTE — I think I am seeing a change in the younger parents, and I am sure you are too. I will not
hold up the answers to questions, but I am seeing a change in the younger parents who are not going to accept
that, which is encouraging from my point of view.
Dr GRAVES — Yes, absolutely. That happened 15 years ago with inclusion internationally.
Mrs COOTE — I saw a fabulous program in California, which was for really gifted kids together with
children with a disability. It was a magical program. Sorry, I know my colleagues want to ask questions too.
Mr MADDEN — Thanks for your presentation; it has been fantastic. The document entitled ‘Milestones in
Inclusive Education Advocacy’ is quite comprehensive, impressive and very useful for us as well, because it
reminds us of what has happened and what has not happened in many ways. I suppose there are a couple of
issues. We have heard from a lot of groups who have said that we need to enhance the inclusiveness in schools
and the way schools do that. We have heard a lot about teacher training, and that it should be part of a
mandatory process for new teachers to have that understanding and those skills as core skills that go with the
education of all the children under their watch. That is the new generation we could potentially get on board. I
suppose it is the cultural shift that we have to make, as we have heard today, in terms of existing skill levels at
schools and the culture of inclusion at many schools, particularly among people who have been in education for
a long time and have been educated in the way it has been done over many years. That is a bit of challenge.
You mentioned that some teachers have gone off-campus to other campuses to see success. Would we be able
to do that more broadly across the education sector and have a champion in each school who champions that
idea? My sense of these things is that success is predominately based on people who are passionate about it and
want to see that change occur. Often changes do not occur at such a cultural level unless you have people with
their hearts set on it. I am interested in hearing comments about that. Would we be able to get each school to
develop champions and bring them back to school to preach conversion to these sorts of things?
Ms ELBAUM — I hate going back to the past, because we are not there. But things have worked, and that
was one of them. The ministry of education has tried to do that but it has stopped. We need to reactivate that. I
think that would be just fantastic. It is knowledge that we have of where it works well. It is so easy, and that is
how teachers do learn. That would be just fantastic if that could be done. I have to say that no parent is going to
choose a regular school while we are in this situation where the hardest job for any family, in my experience,
having been a parent advocate and going with families to schools, is battling to have their kid there if they are
not welcome. If parents have to do that, they will only choose regular school when the regular school is from
their perspective going to give their kid a better deal than the other options. At the moment that is not the case.
As Esther said, we have to strengthen those schools that are doing it well and pass that around more broadly so
that every school is doing it well, which is our obligation as a civil society, and so that parents actually have a
real choice. I worked for five years at the former Spastic Society, where there were schools but it was not a
school. Because it is very daunting to shift from something that is comfortable for students with very high
support needs, the first question we asked parents was, ‘If you could have chosen where you wanted your kid to
go, where would you have chosen?’. Not a single parent said the Spastic Society was their first choice and that
was across its nine centres around Victoria. They went to the Spastic Society because no special school would
take them, let alone a regular school. Parents have a real choice when there is an equal number of good places to
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choose from. In response to your question, at the moment that is the situation. I see my role as boosting those
schools so parents can start to have that choice.
Mrs HARRIS — I would just add that this is one thing the education department, at the high level, could
show leadership in. We know there is good practice out there, as I said. As an advocacy organisation we do not
often get to hear about that directly, but we do hear it. That stuff is not shared around. We all know that we do
not learn best from books but from peer support. Whether you are a parent, a kid or a teacher — whatever —
you learn best from talking to your peers. That is something the Department of Education and Early Childhood
Development could take up. They tell us and we believe it. We know there is good practice out there. But how
do we get it out there? That is probably true of everything — in all areas. Let us find where it is working and
share it so that we can all learn from it. I think that is a key thing the education department could show
leadership in.
Mrs POWELL — I would just like to follow on from what you have all been talking about because this is a
really important subject. As a parent it is probably one of the biggest things to discover which school your child
should go to. You go to the schools around the area and have a look at where your child will fit in. In some
ways people with special needs or people with a disability may not have that choice.
You were talking earlier, Ms Harris, about the welcome, where parents can go to a school, be told about the
facilities and whether or not they will be welcomed, and you said that it is not done everywhere. You were
talking about the education department. As an advocacy group for parents, do you have examples where parents
have told you about a really good practice where they have gone into a school — whether it is mainstream or
not — and the mainstream school has said, ‘We have these facilities’. They have had a look at the child, spoken
with them, looked at their needs and in the best interests of the child have said, ‘You would be better off in our
school’ or ‘in a special school’. Have you looked at examples where parents have taken that advice? Down the
track have you found out whether they felt they had made the right decision or were sorry they had made that
decision?
Ms ELBAUM — I have certainly had the experience where the regular school has said to the family, ‘Look,
we’d love to have your child, but you’re far better off going down the road because they have smaller classes’.
From my perspective — and it does not mean that I am right — I have to say that myths are perpetrated and
families are convinced that that would be a better option and so they take it. I do not know whether they have
made the right decision; I am biased because of the work the professor has done to show that the minute you put
your child into a segregated setting, that line is direct to a segregated life. None of us really want a segregated
life.
My experience has been that friendships do not continue down the track because it is just too hard to try to make
that happen. We all have friends in the regular community in our daily life. I do not know whether they have
made the right decision; I really do not. For me, I would much rather the kid was in a regular school in the
community where he lives — in that small environment — and not shipped off somewhere else. Kids and
parents have said to me, ‘It’s so nice to walk down the street and have the person from the community centre
and the library say “Hi” and have them know me. I am part of it rather than being excluded’. I just cannot
answer your question exactly, I am sorry.
The CHAIR — Thank you very much. On behalf of the committee, we really appreciate your time in
appearing before us today.You will receive a proof copy of the transcript.
Mrs HARRIS —Can I just ask in terms of your report,was it August?
The CHAIR — In the August timetable.
Mrs HARRIS — Is it all right to ask — well, I am going to ask it anyhow — are you on target for doing
that?
The CHAIR — It will actually be September. But yes, deliberations, then obviously the final report in
September.
Mrs HARRIS — Terrific; thank you for that.
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Witnesseswithdrew.
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