President’s Blog

Earlier this month I posted an entry giving my initial reactions to the recent announcement by the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind concerning major changes it is about to make to its rehabilitation services. If you read that entry, you should know that I am generally pleased with what the Foundation says it will be doing but I also drew attention to a number of questions the Association still has which remain unanswered.

At that time, the only information I could go on was an email message sent by the Foundation’s Chief Executive on 27 May to various email lists operated by the Foundation, together with information I had obtained through informal communication. In my blog entry, I mentioned that consumer organisations had asked for a comprehensive briefing paper on the proposed changes, but given that an announcement had already been published, ultimately I decided to publish my comments on 13 June although at that time we had not received the briefing we were waiting for.

Now, just for the record, I can tell you that we received the briefing paper this week. At this stage I haven’t had time to read it. We also have a Board meeting in a couple of weeks time. I’ll post an update on this subject therefore later this month when we have digested the information we’ve now received.

The Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind recently announced changes to the way it will deliver basic rehabilitation services. Bearing in mind that consumer organisations have no more information than what has been announced, and given that we haven’t met yet to even discuss it, this blog entry is my personal reaction and commentary on what has been announced and what we have learned. It might be premature, but I think this is such a significant change in service that some initial comment is warranted. (more…)

Greetings again. The colder weather only serves to remind us that we are just about half way through the year. Where has it gone?

I want to bring you up to date with the latest developments concerning the Foundation’s governance proposal. This is important because it is all about our ability as members to directly govern those specialised services that are there to meet our needs as blind people.

Some of you reading this won’t know what this is about so perhaps some background is in order. (more…)

At our National Conference last year, we passed a remit calling on the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind to stop using the term “partially sighted”, and use instead “vision impaired” when describing the community it serves. So far the Foundation has ignored us.

So why does it matter? What’s in a label. Looking at the whole disabled population, we used to be handicapped or crippled. Some time later we were disabled, and then we were “people with disabilities”. (more…)