From ABC Australia News[Australian Broadcasting Corporation]:

Related story: Immigrants ‘cast off’ disabled kids to enter the country  — ABC Australia

A successful 35-year-old South African software developer is being blocked from immigrating to Australia because he is quadriplegic, even though his skills are in high demand in Australia. The government says the reason for rejecting his application is the high cost of state services for a person with a disability.

Ryan Dekker (above, right, with his father) says he can compete with anyone professionally, and can support himself without any help from the government.

Under Australian rules, families are prohibited from moving to Australia if a member has a disability or health condition predicted to cost taxpayers at least $20,000 over a lifetime.

Related posts here.

(Photo from ABC News)

‘I feel like I’ve lied to a lot of people’

From Newsweek (with video):

Alan T. Brown, who is quadriplegic as the result of an injury, has spent the last two decades trying to find a cure for people who are paralyzed. Now he’s changed his emphasis, working toward improving medical care, insurance coverage and quality of life for people with spinal cord injuries.

“All those people that I’ve spoken to over the years, in the hospitals and the families, and I said ‘one day there’s going to be a cure,’” he says. “And I hope there is … But I can’t guarantee that’s going to happen and I’m not going to sit around and wait any more. I have two children that I have to make sure are cared for.”

Brown is collaborating with the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, which changed its slogan in the summer of 2008 “Go Forward” to “Today’s Care. Tomorrow’s Cure.”

“When we first started, our entire focus was to find a cure, to get people walking again,” says Reeve Foundation president and CEO Peter Wilderhotter. “As we came to realize that since no injury is completely alike and given the complexity of the spinal cord—there will be no ‘magic bullet.’”

From the New York Times:

California’s Supreme Court has granted last-minute permission for a disabled student to take the bar exam, just a week after the state’s bar association told her that a registration snafu would prevent her from taking the test. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger intervened on her behalf.

A graduate of the law school at the University of California at Davis, Sara Granda had been told that her registration for the test was improper because it was not paid with a credit card. Granda lives on disability benefits and has no credit card, so her application was not processed.

Granda, who is paralyzed from the neck down, has said that she wants to pass the bar so that she can begin to support herself. “I want to work,” she said. “To have this hinge on something so trivial seems crazy.”

See also:

Let paralyzed grad take bar exam, Schwarzenegger says — CNN

Paralyzed UC Davis law grad says state bar is barrier to her career — Sacramento Bee

Sara Granda — smart, spirited  and disabled — gets her law degree — Sacramento Bee

The tragic double suicide of a British couple after the death of their disabled son has sparked a passionate national discussion about the availability of supports for the more than six million people in the UK who provide informal or unpaid care for relatives and friends.

Neil and Kazumi Puttick had given up their jobs to care for their five-year-old son Sam, who had been paralyzed in a car accident four years ago. The family had reportedly been coping well until Sam contracted pneumococcal meningitis and died unexpectedly.

Less than 48 hours after his death, the couple drove 140 miles to the southwest coast of England and leaped off the cliffs at Beachy Head, holding Sam’s body in one backpack and his toys in another.

According to experts, a devastating combination of grief, the sudden loss of identity, and the isolation caused by the withdrawal of health and social services after the person dies or moves into a home, can leave carers particularly vulnerable to an emotional breakdown and ill-health.

News coverage has been extensive. Following is a sampling.

Love stories: Britain’s army of carers — [UK] Independent

Three out of four unpaid carers have reached the breaking point — [Glasgow] Herald

Death leap pair ‘loving parents’ — BBC

Beachy head suicide couple turn away friends in final hours — [UK] Independent

The smile his parents could not live without — [UK] Daily Mail

The Japanese tradition behind the family suicide — [UK] Telegraph

Bound by love, united in death — Brisbane [Australia] Times

This will put us over the edge on assisted suicide — Dominic Lawson in the [UK] Times

Having a special needs child means life is harder, but it is also much richer — [UK] Sun

Yes, you can survive the death of a child — [UK] Telegraph

(Kazumi, Sam and Neil Puttick, photo from [UK] Independent)