why to not out someone with a hidden disability.
So this is a really interesting follow-up to how to not out
someone with a hidden disability it is why, it’s important to not out them and
I touched a little on this in the previous video but we see that there is a lot
more behind the why and we see that people think that it’s ok to out people
with a disability all the time, whether it’s through a casual breach of their
privacy or it is more deliberate and targeted such as forcing someone to
disclose personal information that they didn’t want to share to shut them up we
see that this harassment does happen and we see a lot of talk about inclusion
and diversity but when it comes to the disabled community it has been crickets,
due to the complexity of the inclusions needed.
We see that this is where the NDIS comes into it in Australia
but it is incredibly hard to get onto and it is a constant and exhausting
balancing act between, services and being self-reliant, we see that most people
don’t see the benefits of it and this is a shame as it invests in people and without
it, many people wouldn’t be able to work and I am working towards having the
blog as my job and many people who wouldn’t normally have a job can be
disability support workers, and we see that this is an issue that I have
touched on in my series about what is good and bad supports.
https://annieswonderlanda.blogspot.com/2022/11/how-to-pick-good-support-worker-part-one.html
https://annieswonderlanda.blogspot.com/2022/11/how-to-pick-good-support-worker-part-one.html
https://annieswonderlanda.blogspot.com/2022/11/what-is-bad-support-and-how-does-it.html
However we see that this gets complex for the support worker
in working with the client, and we see that support workers depending on their
level of training don’t have much training on what privacy means for the
client, and there isn’t a lot of training for a client about what is expected
of them in regards to respecting the support workers privacy as well, we do see
that people can understand that privacy needs to be respected but how
does it need to be respected, as we see that not using last names does help,
not outing the client as your client unless they are comfortable with it, as it
can cause a lot of harm to the person in there lives if people find out that
you have a disability as much as people celebrate disability inclusion, we see
that many companies don’t walk the talk, and we see that they often see people
with a disability as a risk and not an asset.
A casual security breach is the result of a combination of things and generally know one
is to blame, so sometimes it’s a lack of education, a result of poor training
on keeping information safe, and not having anywhere safe to store sensitive information.
Or the cultural attitude’s at the time
around disability a am sad to say that there are a lot of people in the disability sector who still see the medical model as the best way forward but don’t
see that this is disrespectful and ignorant to people who don’t want to educate
themselves about disability and feel it would be too costly to change there business
model to reflect person-centered care, but promote that is their ethos about disability
and I find this disconnect very hard to deal with at times.
But this is where not unintentionally outing someone is
really important because it can cost them, jobs and other opportunities
that we people without a disability can defend ourselves against and this becomes an issue because people don’t want to understand that people with disabilities are
depending on there disability able to be mostly independent and don’t need to be dictated to
but need help with physical things like getting around, getting into the community
and help to maintain contact with family and friends and to have people support
them in what they are trying to achieve and not working on what they don’t but
feel pushed into because a support worker gets a kick back due to signing
someone up for a course ( and this has really happened to me and I have mentioned it in what is a bad support worker).
We see that there are bad support workers out there but
there are also some great ones as well I have mentioned them on my Patreon
area, but we see that people don’t understand the risk that they are taking
when outing someone with a disability to the person and themselves as if it has
cost the person some opportunities you might find yourself in legal hot water
for breach of privacy if it can be traced back to you or your organization and
this is why I mention a causal breach as a casual breach is something that has
happened internally due to someone being able to access this information that
needs to stay private and we see that a more serious breach is when someone can access information stored online such as in Australia the recent
hacking issues, with NDIS, Medibank Private, and Optus.[i]
I also mentioned in a previous post sometimes people do want
to leverage this information against a person due to jealousy or their own agenda
to “protect,’ other people but we see that this is where a casual breach comes
into it as the person might think they are doing the right thing but they aren’t
because the third party has no right to know and if the first party
hasn’t consented to it we see that this becomes a massive issue because the third party might spread it further and we see that this is where
protection from harm comes into play as your risk causing harm to the person
who shared that information and we see that this could be physical or emotional
harm because support workers are in a position of power over a
person and they need to be aware of this because we now need to
work in person-centered frame work and give the person agency over their own
lives.
In the case of someone with complex disabilities, this can be
difficult but this is where having independent decision-makers is really important
to the person because even well-meaning family and friends can get
carried away by the power they have over the person's life so there needs to be
checks and balances put into place to see what is happening in this area, and
to protect the person with a disability.
In my next post on this topic, I will talk about why it is
important to have the person involved in how information about them is shared. I know this is a lot of work for providers
in the NDIS but it is great to have this information and policies around
privacy and the balance of duty of care written down as it sets up a proper
framework for people both clients and staff alike to have a clear understanding
of what is acceptable and what isn’t because people don’t like talking about it
and providers have the mindset of this is how we have always done it so why do
we need to change due to it being a lot of work, but if you aren’t changing to a
person-centered framework we see that this risks becoming a massive issue in
that people aren’t willing to speak up. But
they will quietly move services to where their needs are better met.
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