Joshua Fuimaono on What We Should Be Doing Right Now
Cool. My name is Joshua Fuimaono. I'm Senior Adviser at Disability Voice over at Oranga Tamariki. The primary function of that is supporting our Disability Advisory Group which is made up of those with lived experience of the disability and care and protection systems, and getting their insights, their voice, their experiences, and using that to help inform how Oranga Tamariki works with disabled young people in care.
One thing I think we should be doing right now would be having more discussions like this, like what we're having today [at the Accessible Futures Summit]. Having a room full of researchers, lived experience, disabled people, their family and supports, as well as really integral decision makers, all around the same table. Having the same sorts of discussions and hopefully coming up with the same sorts of solutions to how we build on accessibility.
Having an open mind and leading conversations with kindness and openness and not making assumptions. And having that as the basis for how you engage and connect with others, almost pre-empts a relationship and discussion around how we explore how we can make things better for each other. And that could be on an individual basis - just walking up to a random person, getting to know who they are, and how they work and walk in life - to have having full on formal meetings or workshops like this one - like this Summit - where we can collectively come together, and actually talk about and find solutions for how we improve accessibility.
Definitely the wider system that's set up to for us to interact with or connect with. Especially in recent years a lot of the services that government agencies provide at the ground level, don't really match up to the needs of the community. And I think that's one of the things we can do right now as a government, but also as a wider system and community, is advancing changes in that space. So that every everyday disabled people in Aotearoa can walk into a space, apply or submit applications for things, for resources and funding, that they need to live better lives.