Pave the Way Stories

Planning - a parent perspective

This story was first published in the Mamre Assocation newsletter, Mamrebillia, in October 2007.    

Planning is such a strange word, isn’t it? At first glance I think of planning as getting out the calendar and organising my family. For this article, however, I was asked to write about how my family planned to get to where we are and so I had to reflect on what planning really means.  

I think for us planning is committing to what is in our hearts and then putting that into action.  In order to put it into action though, we need to be able to articulate what it is we really want. 

This journey of becoming clear about what we want and planning to put it into action began for us when my son was in special school in Victoria. Don’t get me wrong – the people there were lovely and they certainly were well resourced, but my heart was telling me that this wasn’t what was in Dale’s best interests.   It took a few years to work out what was in my heart.  I really had difficulty being able to articulate it.  Instincts can be funny things. 

When we started the journey to mainstream school there were a lot of barriers and hurdles to overcome and it was made all the more difficult because I could only act on what was in my heart.  It’s very difficult to convince educators that “it’s just not right” and not be able to articulate why or how.    We had to get back to the nuts and bolts of it, and work out what it really was that we wanted for Dale.  We decided that what we wanted was for Dale to lead a typical and full life. 

In order for Dale to have a good and typical life we had to really think of what it was that made up a typical life.  Some of those things were having a job, having your own home, friends, family and an active life.  When it came down to it, it became clear that a special school experience would not enhance those aims. In fact it would get in the way.  I then immersed myself in a culture that supported our ideals, by meeting other parents through Qld Parents of People with a Disability and going to heaps of events that gave us more information.  I attended conferences, got involved in QPPD activities, and made a pest of myself with parents who had already gone before us and were also committed to this ideal.  I also started working in the area of disability to get an idea of what we were dealing with. 

Since moving to Brisbane, Dale has been in a small Catholic school where mostly he has had an inclusive education.  There are always things that go wrong but with information and learning from other supportive parents, some great teachers and other allies, we have managed to get him through to grade 7 with some semblance of an education.  Next year he will be attending a mainstream high school and although this is really scary, we are confident that this will also be a mainly positive experience.   

Our family has had to sit down regularly and look at what Dale needs to be involved with in order to support our ideal of him having a typical life.  He needs people around him, and needs to be involved in community activities.  Dale is in scouts and gets to do great stuff with that, he has played soccer and AFL and is currently learning bass guitar. As a family we have moved around a lot so community is not something we have known too much about. We haven’t had any family around either.  We have great neighbours now, though and have made a decision to stay put in order to enhance these opportunities. 

When you are committed to a certain expectation for a way of life, you get to see the opportunities that present themselves.  

Last year Dale attended one of the Sony Foundation Children’s Holiday Camps held at a local boy’s college. Dale had been offered this opportunity for the last few years and I had resisted it as it is only for children with disabilities.  This didn’t fit our ideal of a typical life. We figured Dale needs to go on “normal” camps with scouts or with school.  However, this time we thought it would be OK as the Sony camp offered some great activities and Dale would be buddied with a year 12 student from the school.  

Dale’s buddy turned out to be a great young man.  He had a good rapport with Dale and really saw his potential. He also seemed to enjoy Dale’s company. They bonded really well. Seeing an opportunity here, I asked him if he would like to hang out with Dale sometimes. He had just finished year 12 and was going to university so we knew that he would be quite busy but fortunately he agreed. He now goes to scouts with Dale and goes on camps with him.  

Since then we have been able to get some financial support from our family support agency, the Mamre Association, to actually employ Dale’s buddy. This had given us more consistency in the times he spends with Dale and we now feel that we can ask him to do specific things.  Mamre negotiated the employment role which was a really important thing for us.  What if he said no? Could I handle the rejection on Dale’s behalf? It was challenging enough just asking him to hang out!  Having someone else do the asking gave us a buffer against some of these concerns.  

Part of the role involves assisting Dale to connect with others.  An example of this is at scouts where Dale met another young man.  The support worker gently kept the conversations going between the boys and eventually Dale and Ben had dinner together.  They are still good mates.  

When I tell other parents whose children attended that camp about this, they were surprised and told me that they wished they’d thought of it.  Their kids had bonded well with their buddies as well.  But we saw the opportunity because we visualized a certain way of life for Dale, and had a commitment to making it happen.   

This to me, is planning.  Sometimes opportunities come out of the blue, sometimes you have to chase them.  But if the big picture is firmly in mind, then the steps get lit up on the way. 

We have recently needed to ask Mamre to help us take the next step.  We have realised (painfully) that any family has the right to thrive.  With the pressures facing us at the moment, we have had to drop our expectation of “doing it all ourselves” and asked for help to move things forward.  The next planning step for us is to get more people sharing our ideal for a good life for Dale, and having those people share the safeguarding role in that.  We have decided to attend Pave the Way’s six day workshop, “From Visions to Action through Planning”.  It’s a big step for us, but it fits the big picture so we know that it’s right.  It’s a plan.