Mike Gourley critically examines the latest government foray into disability issues - The Enabling Good Lives initiative.

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Mike Gourley looks at the support available for disabled people making the transition from school to further training or work.

Transition services refer to a range of disability support agencies that focus on helping younger learning or intellectually disabled people make it in the world of post-compulsory education, either in further training or in the job market.

One such agency is Emerge Supported Employment.

Transitions Coordinator Alex Sligo Green outlines his role in getting alongside the younger person - some who've been mainstreamed in secondary school and are keen to follow up on further training opportunities, mainly in polytech courses, designed to meet specific learning neds, or more job-oriented courses that are inclusive of disabled people.

The Operations Manager of Emerge, Linda Fisher, says they're appreciative of their partnership with Weltech's Community and Vocational Living Skills, or CVLS Course, taught at their Petone Campus, north of Wellington.

Scott Breckman heads up the CVLS Course. He describes it as providing learners with the necessary foundation to either pursue further training or getting a job.

Adrian Gordon is an example of the latter. Adrian is affected by William's syndrome, a condition that renders a person gregarious and outgoing, but also intellectually impaired.

Adrian's mother Brenda Gordon was thrilled to attend her son's graduation earlier this year. In her message of gratitude to Weltech, she acknowledged the aspects of the course that had benefitted Adrian, not the least of which was the travel Adrian had to negotiate to get from Hataitai to Petone every day.

The other aspect she praised was the "build a bridge and get over it" component. To cap it off, she reports that Adrian has since garnered a part-time job with a website development business.

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Mike Gourley explores the current state of employment options for disabled people in the aftermath of the repeal of the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Act.

In 2001, the then government released its Pathways to Inclusion Strategy. The strategy provided for a new regime of support services to ensure that disabled people would find meaningful community participation, either through paid work or other  avenues of community  participation, through good quality day programmes.

Among the changes called for by the strategy was the repeal of the near fifty year-old Disabled Persons Employment Promotion or DPEP Act 1960.

That Act exempted sheltered workshops and other like enterprises from affording their disabled clients minimum employment conditions, particularly the minimum wage.

Then Disability Issues Minister at the time, Ruth Dyson, managed to shepherd the repeal legislation successfully through Parliament in 2007. That courted controversy at the time, with some workshops threatening closure, or extensive layoffs. In replacing the DPEP Act, Ruth Dyson says she believed she'd reached agreement with a major provider to continue on in the new environment, given that there was still the option to operate with a Minimum Wage Exemption - .

In the event, that major provider reneged on the agreement and closed many of its day-bases, which caused a large degree of community outrage. That controversy is set to re-ignite, with the current government moving to remove the MWE "loophole".

Tess Casey is the Chief Executive of Inclusive NZ, which started life as The Federation of Sheltered Workshops then became Vocational and Support Services, before its current iteration. Casey says that various enterprises ceased to be employers and became community participation services. It's impossible to say what happened to all the disabled clients because there's never been a central tracking census done.

One agency that met the economic and political headwinds head on was the Avalon Disability Support Trust.

Chief Executive Tania Wilson and board member Helen Brownlee describe the transformation of their service from that of a traditional sheltered workshop to a support agency that tries to meet the aspirations of their disabled clients, including working at jobs of their choice for the same rates of pay as their non-disabled peers, whether that be working in the orchard or community gardens.

It's that kind of model that NZ Disability Support Network  Chief Executive, Garth Bennie argues for - a sustainable business model that can support job equity for disabled people.

Community Connections Executive Director John Taylor believes all talk of Minimum Wage Exemption is a red herring…

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Mike Gourley profiles the people and issues in play at the time of the decision to close the Kimberley Centre (once a housing facility for the intellectually disabled) ten years ago this year.

Templeton Farm was the first in a line of custodial centres for the 'mentally deficient' (as people with mental retardation were referred to back in the mid-twentieth century).

In fact, the New Zealand medical fraternity came up with the term 'psychopaedic' to differentiate between those who were mentally ill and those who were mentally retarded. The language currently in vogue would refer to these people as those with an intellectual or learning disability.

Set up south of Christchurch,  it wasn't long before there were calls to set up a similar centre in the North Island. A suitable two hundred acres south of Levin was set aside, having previously been a farm, then an air-force base at the outbreak of World War Two.

In the late 1940s, both the land and airforce buildings were converted into what was first known as the Kimberley Colony for Mental Defectives, then eventually the Kimberley Hospital and Training Centre  But it soon got the tags 'idiot farm' and the like. Local dignatories at the time lobbied the Health Minister to prevent it opening.

It's worth noting that at the time of promised closure early this century the then local dignatories lobbied the current government of the day to prevent its closure! Why people were placed there is unclear. Usually it was children who had challenging behaviours, or were thought to be 'feeble-minded', according to doctors, who then advised parents to place their charges into the Psychopaedic institutions. Parents were often ashamed of these children, often hiding them from their siblings.

However, in its earlier phase, Kimberley was embraced by the local community. Farmers would take on some of the older boys as volunteer labour, and in some instances, the good women of the local Country Women's Institute bestowed Christmas gifts on the residents.

Of course, at first, Kimberley was only for boys. But over the years, it gradually brought in girls and young women, although the sexes were segregated in different villas.

There's no doubt that many policymakers were well intentioned in wishing for troubled young men to be kept out of Asylums, and receive more specialist services. But there was a darker underside. Put bluntly, there was a fear that so-called "mental defectives would breed and sully the race, so they needed to be kept apart from society…

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In this final spectrum Justin Gregory presents a series of Spectrum stories past and present that represent the wondrous array of every day Kiwis.

spectrum ˈspɛktrəm/

noun: spectrum; plural noun: spectra; plural noun: spectrums

1.a band of colours, as seen in a rainbow, produced by separation of the components of light by their different degrees of refraction according to wavelength.

Forty-four years isn't a bad run for a programme that has brought listeners into the lives, homes and hearts of everyday New Zealanders. Spectrum is a programme about people and relationships, reflecting on experiences that weave our sense of history and place of belonging into an authentic reality. These stories are told by people whose memories and narratives speak of life as it was, and as it is, and the hopes and wishes for what life might become.

Although Spectrum is coming to an end, the collection is an important catalogue of the human experience that has built a vibrant rainbow of New Zealand perspectives, showcasing the quirks of our human condition; including our frailties, victories and longings-it is a place where New Zealanders can revel in being themselves, where ordinary becomes extraordinary.

There are many stories that have been produced over the years by a raft of talented producers. Justin Gregory presents and collates some of the most memorable in this commemorative and final episode of Spectrum, which includes an historic recreation of a battle fought at Gate Pa; a helicopter rescue; taggers on Wellington streets, and the state of homelessness after the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes…

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In New Zealand one in four children under the age of 18 are said to be living in a situation of physical violence, neglect or abuse. Men are often the perpetrators, but women also have a hand in reported and unreported cases. In this week's Spectrum, Sonia Sly looks at the stigmas around women who harm children, the prevalence of child abuse in New Zealand, and how local organisations assist and support victims.

Warning: This article contains stories and descriptions of domestic violence and child abuse. It may be disturbing to some readers.

A woman in her mid-30s ushers three children out of a bus. The two older children trundle off ahead, while the mother waits and yells at her third child to get the "F%&* off the bus".

But he can't. He is paralysed with fear. There is a drop that equates to an adult leaping off the roof of a single story building and for a child who is not yet two-years-old, the fall to the bottom is terrifying.

The child cries as the bus waits, while the mother's face turns into knots. She walks off without him pushing an empty stroller, forcing the small, helpless child to hurtle himself out of the bus. He lands on his knees, grazing his hands on concrete in compliance with his mother's aggressive commands.

This event is one of many hurdles that this little boy will face. He will learn to become independent, and should he slip, there will be no-one to catch his fall.

It is a saddening fact that tens of thousands of children in New Zealand live in at-risk environments, in a country with the fifth highest rate of child homicide of 31 OECD countries.

Here, one child dies every five weeks from inflicted injuries, and 1 in 4 children under the age of 18 are living in situations where they vulnerable to violence or maltreatment within the home. With horrific, high profile cases hitting the media headlines, we can no longer turn away from the facts.

But while we are outraged by these stories, the reasons behind child neglect and abuse are not always clear-cut.

Professor Dawn Elder is a Paediactric specialist  at Wellington Hospital who works clinically across many areas relating to child protection.

She sees many cases come through the hospital doors.

"When you've been around as long as I have, you start to recognise the names of parents and they're the names of children who you've seen in the past. We almost always find that  is inter-generational."…

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