It’s been a bit of an interesting week!

Hold on for the ride because this is a long one!
I spent Monday and most of Tuesday doing housework and prepping to head to Wellington on Tuesday afternoon for the first of the “Networking” meeting for the System Transformation on Wednesday.

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Enabling Good Lives Regional meetings

Progress is happening.
We shot home Tuesday morning from Lake Taupo as I had the Disabled Person’s Core Group meeting to attend. Not only that but I also had the opportunity to meet Valeria, who I sent a Search & Rescue team after in the Far North a few weeks ago. Although I got the “Lost Party has been located safe and well” response from SAR it was good to see her and give her a hug. It was also good to hear her side of the story of what had unfolded that day. It was a pleasure to meet her and get to know Valeria a little.

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I love seeing people bitten by the climbing bug.

It was time to hit the walls.
We had a great group turn up.
I haven’t done a lot of climbing since the Paraclimbing competition at the end of August so it was well and truly time to hit a wall. With the Enabling Good Lives work I’m involved in it could be easy to lose sight of what really drives me; climbing. On Saturday I was invited by Waikato Climbing Club and Parafed Waikato to help out with an adaptive climbing session hosted at Extreme Edge & Climbzone Hamilton. Thank you to David from Parafed Waikato, Sylvia from Extreme Edge Hamilton, Doug and and the club members from the Waikato Climbing Club that came along to haul ropes.

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I had to stop for a few days

I took a few days out.
It’s been almost 2 weeks since my last blog, I had a bit of a health blip and needed to stop and actually rest for a few days.
This week started with the 4th meeting of the Safeguarding Working Group. Being part of this group has been really intense. I came onto the group to ensure that the disability community wasn’t “over safeguarded”, due to wanting to protect people from harm considering perceived risks. I totally agree, acknowledge and understand the need to protect people and particularly those in a “vulnerable person’s” (Crimes Act definition of Vulnerable person) position, but I had concerns that in order to protect people, regulation and/or policy would be restricting others choice to participate in “risky” activities. “Risk” is different for everyone and each persons individual circumstances must be considered.

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Another busy start to the week.

No rest for the wicked?

This week I had the second of the Safeguarding Work Stream meetings for Enabling Good Lives. I’m still trying to get used to urban travel. We travel down to Wellington on a Monday afternoon for the meetings held on Tuesdays. It appears that heading to Wellington once a week (most weeks) will be likely for the next couple of months for this type of work as I am participating in the Network Building Work Stream as well.
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Time to take stock

It’s go, go, rest.
I’ll be honest, I haven’t been as productive as could have been this week. I’m not hugely upset by that, sometimes I would be but this week I’m just not too bothered.
Monday saw me head to Wellington for the first of my Work Stream meetings for the “Safeguarding” within Enabling Good Lives on Tuesday. I realised that I’m really not used to “urban” travel when I only had to pack one change of clothes and toiletries. I’m so used to having pack literally everything I’d need, it feels very odd to have only one small bag and ADNZ Ben’s bags.

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Another busy week!

Life is certainly not boring!
My last blog was specifically written about what was on my mind after a challenge was issued by some in the disability community, that we need more people to step up and take some initiative in speaking our own stories. I will get back to this later in this post but I just want to let you know how the rest of my week went.

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General update.

I haven’t posted a lot since the climbing competition. Once we got home and got ADNZ Ben sorted out, I crashed and have been having a few health issues.

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