there's our catastrophe

AS THE state government prepares to restructure public housing, feedback surveys given to tenants this month are available only in English, a foreign language for about half of residents.

Mere-Paore Epere, chairwoman of an inner-suburban tenants’ group, said the survey is a mystery to many residents. Ms Epere said the 4000 tenants represented by her group included African, Arabic, Chinese, Greek and Turkish speakers.

When she rang a contact number supplied with the document to ask if the survey had been translated Ms Epere was told it was available only in English. ”They said to get a friend of a friend to translate the questions, or a family member.”

While the 12-page survey is in English, it strays into a form of the language that might be described as bureaucratic gobbledegook, with questions such as: ”How can good tenant behaviour and mutual obligation be incentivised?”

“incentivised”, for realsies? omg

AT 2pm on Thursday, July 7, last year, a fisherman saw a body floating on the Maribyrnong River near the Raleigh Road pontoon and called the police. The body was that of 22-year-old Michael Atakelt, who arrived in Australia from Ethiopia in 2006. He he had been staying with a friend in Footscray while he studied English at Victoria University. He had been missing for 11 days since being held in police custody overnight. At the scene, the homicide squad determined that the circumstances were not suspicious, and local police were assigned the investigation.

I began researching this story in mid-August. At the time, Atakelt’s family and the Ethiopian community were expecting the autopsy results within weeks. But they did not arrive.

(Source: upmountains)

Autism is estimated to affect one in every 160 students in Australia. The number of students with autism in Melbourne’s western suburbs alone has jumped from 391 in 2006 to 6855 in 2010. But the western suburbs is one of the few regions in Melbourne without a dedicated autism school for students from prep to year 12. This means families with children at the Western Autistic School are forced to make the difficult, sometimes agonising, decision about where to send their child after year 3.

A review of autism education in Melbourne’s western metropolitan region last year found families want the choice of a local mainstream school where their children can socialise and learn with their peers. This is what is known as ”inclusion”, an educational philosophy that students with disabilities should not be separated from other children.

However, the independent report, commissioned by the Education Department, found many families believe mainstream schools are unwilling, or unable, to cater for students with autism. They worry their children will be bullied and unable to cope with the sensory overload of big groups, particularly given the trend towards larger, open-plan classrooms.

Almost half the students at Western Autistic School end up going to a special school that caters for students with intellectual disabilities. But to get in, students must have an IQ lower than 70. Inevitably there are some who fall through the cracks.

”Many parents report a perceived lack of choice when their child leaves Western Autistic School,” the review says. ”They express concern that they will be unable to access appropriate and intensive support for their child without an (autism) specific school.”