Equality in Action

Post Reply New Topic

I am so, so peed off right now that I have completely ceased to function. My brain is on shutdown through over load.

My daughter is supposed to be going on a school trip. This costs 1000 kr per student. Fine, we can pay that. But she can't cope with an unsupported residential trip. So I asked the school if she could take an assistant to support her. They said yes. A friend of mine volunteered her time to be that assistant. Great. Sorted. I wish. I've just received an email from the school saying that I have to pay a further 3000 kr to cover the additional costs to the school of her assistant going.

Every other parent has to pay 1000 kr. The parents of the child with a disability has to pay 4000 kr despite finding their own assistant who's giving her time for free. So now she can't go because it's too expensive.

That's equality for you.

That's crazy. Did they even try to justify the extra charge?

Doesn't sound fair, but I have to suppose that for the 1,000 you're paying normally, the school must pay 3,000. Hence, if an assistant goes along, that's an additional 3,000 cost they aren't being compensated for.

If that is so, it would make sense. Many school trips are subsidized and the students only pay a small portion of the cost. I would question what the 3,000 is for and if you could just pay your assistant's own way (rooming, food, etc.).

The conversion comes out to $466.00 USD (for my reference). How long is the trip? I can see transportation, lodging and meals easily costing that much over a few days.

They're going away for 3 days. That's why she needs someone with her.

The thing is, I was doing them a favour by arranging for my friend to escort her. She has the right to go on the trip too and the school are legally bound to meet her special needs. So now I'll have to tell them that my friend isn't going anymore and they'll have to work a hell of a lot harder to ensure my daughter's needs are met while she's away and they'll have to deal with any meltdowns that come up and they'll have to supervise her round the clock.

(Apart from the fact that she doesn't want to go now.)

I understand that, but for 3 days, that comes out to just over $155 USD per day...very reasonable if it includes transportation and lodging.

The point is that they probably have the funding to compensate the cost of each student and chaperones for the whole group. Your daughter needing a personal attendant is not something they budgeted for, so they're asking you to pick up the cost.

Here in the US, I'm sure some group would threaten to sue over this. I've seen such tactics used to provide interpreters for the deaf at events where THERE WERE NO DEAF PEOPLE ATTENDING.

However, in your case, the school knows your daughter is a student with special needs, they should have budgeted for the foreseeable need. How high up are you talking with someone on this? Maybe this could be avoided in the future by better fiscal planning for events involving overnight stays.

I've emailed a friend who is a special needs teacher at another school to find out what should really be happening in a situation like this. The problem for me is that I'm not in my home country and I don't know all the ins and outs of how things work here. I do know that in my home country the disability discrimination ombudsman would be all over this like a rash.

Talking to some kind of disability authority sounds like a good idea. Is this in Norway or some other country? There was a lot of fuss about possible poor people with our school trips, I can't see that you should have to pay more.

OTOH the attitude that "We don't need this particular form of accessibility because people who need it don't come here anyway" is so common and illogical that it's actually a running joke in the disability community. I'm sure the event was also accessible to many sorts of nondisabled people who didn't show up, but nobody ever complains about that. That's the problem with seeing disability issues as issues of "providing accommodations" rather than "removing barriers to participation".

That way of looking at things is really interesting and I would never have thought of it on my own. I'd love to hear more, although I guess that would constitute thread drift.

Oh, I understand that, but providing accommodation for specific disabilities is not cheap, and for someone to call in, make threats, and force the head of the arts department to hire an interpreter out of her own pocket so avoid litigation then have not one deaf person attend was exactly why getting accommodations is so hard.

If you have a disability that needs special accommodations (like hearing impaired), you should inquire when buying a ticket to an event and see to it arrangements are made, but don't expect them to have a sign language interpreter on hand for everything. That's way too expensive to manage, and if you ask for the accommodation, have the decency to show up. Jerking people around only gives them good cause to NOT do it for the next person who asks.

Ok, I've found out that this is not how it's supposed to be. There are several different agencies with different responsibilities who should be talking to each other and making this happen. I know from dealing with each and everyone one of them over the years that they are about as much use as a chocolate teapot. The only way to make it work is for me to run around and chase them all and put in all the work.

I can't do it

It would be hard enough for anyone, but I'm autistic too plus I don't speak the language here very well. Everytime I try to work out what I need to do I become overwhealmed and cry. Enough is enough. I can't do it.

Why don't you take the opportunity to do something fun with your daughter, then?

Get someone else to do it? Do you have any relatives / friends who could step in for you?