A friend of mine works with young people who are first- or second-generation migrants to New Zealand. Her job is to equip them with the skills they'll need to run campaigns, advocate for their communities, and improve the lives of the people around them. They're 'therapists' of a sort. She has a simple way of knowing whether someone is doing the right thing or not. She asks "Are you kicking up, or kicking down?" By 'kicking up', she means agitating against those people with power, the ones in positions in authority. All too often people find it easier to kick down: taking aim at the people who are easy targets, because they're vulnerable, less powerful, less fortunate. It's the … [Read more...] about Kicking up, not kicking down
WCPT advocates for the inclusion of people with disabilities in physiotherapy profession
Last week, the WCPT unveiled its latest briefing paper titled Access to physical therapist entry level education and practice for persons with disabilities. This paper and supporting resources are significant, not only for their critical and radical statements on the relationship between physiotherapists and people with disabilities, but also because they situate one of the profession's leading advocacy organisations in the position of critiquing physiotherapy's longstanding atheism towards disability rights. Physiotherapists have long paid lip-service to the idea that they advocate for the rights of disabled people, but have systematically excluded disabled people from training (with … [Read more...] about WCPT advocates for the inclusion of people with disabilities in physiotherapy profession
Opening doors to disability
I've been in Wellington for the last three days exploring the archives to find any trace of physical therapy activity in New Zealand in the 19th century. So far it's been a frustrating search. While I've been down here, I've been having some interesting discussions with people about disabled physiotherapy students. We have just graduated our first tetraplegic physiotherapist and I've been in discussion with our regulatory authority about the conditions for their license to practice. So this article sent to me by CPN member Anne Hudon came at a very convenient time. Thanks Anne. Across the country, people with disabilities are redefining the possible by excelling in scholarly … [Read more...] about Opening doors to disability