Recognised in the King's Birthday Honours was our Christchurch Ōtautahi based DPA member Allison Franklin, who became Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM).
Thank you Allison for sharing with us your reflections of your involvement with DPA and the disability sector.
It was indeed an honour to be made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, on King’s Birthday this year. Reading my citation, I realised it only covered some of the work and involvement I’ve had in the disability sector, since I started in 1979. My first job as Secretary at the Disabled Living Centre in Lower Hutt (aged 20) was my first ongoing contact with other people with disabilities. The Centre was a drop in, information service (a forerunner to the Disability Information Centres, now nationwide) and also ran a Dial-a-Ride service with a wheelchair transit van.
After returning to my home town of Christchurch in late 1980, I worked, initially voluntarily and was later employed by the Disabled Living Centre here. We moved to Worcester Street and became the Disabled Persons Centre in 1982, funded by proceeds of the 1981 IYDP Telethon which raised $5 million. Funding from the same telethon led to the formation of DPA nationally in 1983. In 1984 I attended the inaugural meeting to establish DPA Christchurch & Districts at the DPC, meeting up with Marilyn Baikie who I remembered as being a teacher at Heaton Intermediate School when I’d been a pupil there over a decade earlier. I soon joined the Regional Committee, getting very involved with Disability Awareness sessions in schools.
I worked in schools for 25 years, along with many other people, and we certainly helped create more positive attitudes towards people with disabilities, showing we were “just” people, not a different species!
In 1987 I was nominated for DPA’s National Executive Committee and subsequently elected. It was an interesting time as initiatives such as the Total Mobility and Teletext (providing information and TV subtitles for the Deaf community, in the days before the Internet) were being rolled out, promoted by DPA. More Regional Assemblies were springing up around NZ, and I lead a programme called New ERA (Empowering Regional Assemblies) to help them get established.
I was elected National Vice President of DPA in 1992. Marilyn Baikie was President by then, so the Christchurch team was at the helm. ACC and DPA took a delegation to the Rehabilitation International Congress in Nairobi, Kenya that year to put in a bid to host the 1996 Congress in Auckland. We were up against Israel for the hosting rights. I wrote the speech that Marilyn delivered beautifully, and ACC brought along a Māori Concert party. We wiped the floor with Israel, whose main pitch was that New Zealand was too far away! Delegates voted for us by a landslide! In 1996 we hosted over 2000 delegates from all over the world at the Aotea Centre in Auckland. It was declared the best Congress to date.
Returning from Kenya I found CCS had nominated me for some role in health. Four Regional Health Authorities had been established by the Government to fund all Health services. A subsequent decision was made to transfer Disability Support Services from Welfare to Health, and an additional Board Director was appointed to each RHA to ensure Disability was represented at board level. I found myself a Director on the Southern RHA Board from 1993-96. I had definite “imposter syndrome” for the first year, but learnt a tremendous amount about the entire health and disability sectors.
When my appointment term ended, I was asked to help organise the DPA Christchurch office which we now had in Christchurch Community House in Cashel Street. Working alongside a lovely chap, Tony White, who sadly died suddenly in 1997, the office became a busy hub. I then became the first paid employee of DPA Christchurch as Secretary, administering the Committee and running the office.
I resigned in May 2000, and the following year was employed by LifeLinks (the Needs Assessment/Service Coordination agency) as Consumer Advisor, until 2005.
After that I had two more Ministerial appointments, one to the Lottery Distribution Committee for Individuals with Disabilities for three years, and to the Upper South A Health & Disability (medical) Ethics Committee, also for three years. Later on I spent four years on the Ministry of Health DSS Consumer Consortium for the Cerebral Palsy Society, and ten years on Meridian Energy’s Community Consumer Panel here in Christchurch, representing the disability sector.
So it was a busy four decades. I’ve met some fantastic people and made life-long friends. My work has been varied and interesting and, I like to think, has contributed to improving the lot of people with disabilities and the wider community.
I’m now retired and, to be honest, worn out. My trip to Government House in Wellington in September for my investiture of my MNZM is likely to be my last.
But it was all worth it!
