BCIFV home > Media Release > February 21, 2003

For Immediate Release:

February 21, 2003

Contact: Penny Bain, Executive Director, BCIFV
phone: 604.669.7055, 1.877.755.7055, or
pbain@bcifv.org or www.bcifv.org

Opinion Piece:
Children with Disabilities are Children First
Variety Club Telethon Highlights Importance of Meeting the Needs of All Children.

Staff at the BC Institute Against Family Violence are pleased about the success of this year's Variety Club Telethon. Given that the BCIFV project The Person Within focuses on the need to see beyond children's disabilities - to see that they have the same developmental needs as all children and that these needs must be met if they are to fulfill their potential - we were particularly interested that one of this year's hosts, Tammy Corness, was the "telethon child" in 1983 and now teaches in a public school, where she inspires students with and without disabilities to attain their goals.

The full-circle feeling this evokes speaks strongly to our need as a society to see people with disabilities as people first. It is apparent from Corness' experiences (and the experiences of many others too numerous to mention) that when we give children with or without disabilities the opportunities they need to fulfill their potential, we reap the fruits of our joint labours together.

Although it was probably not the intention of the show's producers, Corness' appearance on this year's telethon makes it starkly apparent that it is only because of our societal prejudices against people with disabilities that we find it necessary to fundraise in order to provide services that meet the basic needs of children with disabilities. Yet it is these services that will give them the best start in life and increase the chance that they will grow up to make the kind of meaningful daily contribution that Corness is making, and that all parents hope their children will make some day.

As a society, we don't fundraise so that the majority of children can have access to the basic public education or health care they need if they are to become fully contributing adult citizens. Yet our society remains mired in the belief that if we fulfill the needs of children with disabilities out of the same tax dollars that we use to meet other children's needs rather than by fundraising separate, special dollars, we will be taking something away from those other children.

If there were validity in this idea, the reverse would also be valid: that by meeting the needs of children without disabilities, we would be taking away from children with disabilities. Both ideas are untrue because they are based on the belief that one group of children is more deserving than the other. It is only by overcoming this belief that we will be able to raise all our children to contribute to society to the best of their abilities. And we cannot know how many times over our children's contributions will repay the investments we have made in them, until we make those investments.

The Person Within is a video, workshop, and handbook addressing the need to see children with disabilities as children first. For more information, contact The Person Within Project, at 604.669.7055, 1.877.755.7055, reception@bcifv.org, or visit www.bcifv.org.

The upcoming issue of the BCIFV newsletter AWARE, to be released in hard copy and online in mid-April, will focus on abuse of people with disabilities. This issue will include an article on abuse of children with disabilities by Sally Rogow, a retired UBC professor of special education and creator of The Person Within. For more information, contact Penny Bain, executive director of BCIFV, at 604.669.7055, 1.877.755.7055, pbain@bcifv.org, or visit www.bcifv.org.

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