Earlier this year Stuff ran a series that focused on how the way the world is built proves to be inaccessible for people with disabilities. All the obstacles to participation that were highlighted in the series need to be negotiated before people with disabilities can even begin to think about doing things that they enjoy or things that are essential to their wellbeing or just having a life.

Accessibility can make a world of difference and enables the provision of programmes and strategies that enhance wellbeing by encouraging participation in activities that provide benefits far beyond the immediate activity. Methodist City Action provides programmes like this at the (accessible) Methodist Centre in Hamilton’s CBD. Our programmes are available to people aged 20+ with physical, intellectual, behavioural and mental health disabilities.

The programmes that we offer look ordinary on paper – Art & Craft, Brain Gym, Indoor Team Sports and Cookery. The thing is, they are so much more than simply a chance to engage in activities that the rest of us take for granted. In this respect, our starting point is to provide ‘a life more normal’ for our participants. Our end point knows no limits. Our students improve their physical skills, for example, through playing volleyball, indoor cricket or table tennis. At the same time they learn to play by the rules of the game, to be part of a team and to win or lose graciously. Then add in the friendships they forge, the social mores they absorb and the delight they take in all of this.

Our students have a large range of disabilities – autism, brain injuries, Down Syndrome, cerebral palsy, blindness, hearing impairments and mental health issues. We’ve had a couple with a history of violence and two who began with us as non-verbal individuals. When they are here, they grow far beyond their disabilities, focussing on what is possible rather than what is limiting. Some of our more experienced students volunteer on Mondays to help us produce the community meal we provide for up to 70 locals who are homeless, hungry or lonely.

We recently added a class is for students who a short time ago couldn’t remember what they had done in the past week. They are all from a mental health unit and all are medicated and initially struggled to focus. One was non-verbal. During the fourth class, he began to sing. In week five, he walked into the building with “Morning, Jen. How are you?” That is progress; achievement unconnected to cookery skills but obtained through them. The difference represents a step change in their quality of life and we know that ongoing programmes are required to sustain them for as long as it takes for them to become self-sustaining. Therein lies a problem.

Funding for services and programmes for people with disabilities is notoriously difficult to find. We are routinely excluded from access to funds because of whom we serve. Many funders exclude projects serving people with disabilities on the grounds that government should be funding them. This argument conflates clinical services with social services and can be traced back to the medical model of disability which is based on ‘deficits’ and how to ‘fix’ them. The social model of disability focuses on abilities rather than deficits and acts on what can be changed in our ‘disabling environments’ to further facilitate what is possible rather than what is limiting.

MCA falls into this latter category; we provide pathways for personal and social development. Our services are not clinical. We don’t provide ‘treatment’ (yet we do), we don’t provide ‘therapy’ (yet we do) and we don’t simply help to fill in their day (yet we do). These are not health services though they do much to improve wellbeing.hether it is the responsibility of government or not, the fact is government does not fund the types of services we offer and without philanthropy our students would stagnate – unfulfilled, unchallenged, underdeveloped and always undervalued. Each life that is less than it could be is a loss to both the individual and the community. We have some wonderful organisations and individuals in the region who quietly and generously champion social justice and equity in all its forms. There is a perverse irony in the fact that for MCA and others like us there is a continuing problem with accessibility when it comes to funding.