I met a lovely lady called Sass who has quad CP one day at the shopping centre – I was helping her get her groceries to her taxi as she had run out of room on her power chair. Anyway, she was approached by a woman while I was helping her who basically accused her of taking the woman’s funding for a power chair as she had been on the waiting list for over a year (and Sass’s power chair was brand new and nice and shiny). It was really one of those “what the?” situations. This woman could obviously walk where Sass could obviously not and yet, she thought she was more entitled than Sass.

But my main moan at the moment relates to the articles I read every week in the local community paper. There is article after article by families of children with disabilities saying basically “our life is cr#p” in order to get donations. To me, by doing this, you are reinforcing negatives stereotypes and saying that the person with a disability’s life is less valued than others. That the family should be pitied by “normal” people. I understand the need to try and get money from whatever source you can, but just wish they would do it with positives, not negatives.

And don’t get me started on the family here that basically hi-jacked the government into giving them respite services by saying without it, they would put their child into foster care. I could go on all day.