On Ageism Awareness Day 2022, I have pledged with Every Age Counts and also here:

I STAND FOR A WORLD WITHOUT AGEISM

To promote awareness of violence, abuse and neglect in residential aged care in Australia (and globally, I also wish to share a blog posted this week on the Dementia Justice website, on the NEW United Nations deinstitutionalisation guidelines.

Even if you cannot see why this is 100% relevant to people with dementia or indeed, anyone locked in large institutional residential care facilities, or worse, further incarcerated in segregated, and locked ‘secure dementia units’, I will personally continue to campaign for this until the day I die.

Ps. I’ve been challenged, and even attacked about my belief that institutionalisation is abuse, and that I’m indirectly challenging and offending care partners; even if someone is not being sedated, and are not abused or neglected in any way, they are locked in. Having been a care partner for three people who have died in ‘care’, I had no choice about them living in residential aged care institutions as they needed assisted living, and I was unable to provide it – but it was 100% coercive, as there are no other non institutional choices available, at least in my city.

Reparations a vital dimension of deinstitutionalisation: NEW United Nations Guidelines

By Linda Steele and Kate Swaffer

Published on 5 October 2022

Article 19 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) provides people with disability the right to independent living and community inclusion. This means people with disability should be able to live where they choose and with whom they choose. Providing access to accommodation in the form of largescale residential institutions, however, is inconsistent with this right, and governments now have an obligation to plan for deinstitutionalisation.

Read the full blog here…