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Attitude ACC Employer Award Fairfax Media Annamarie helped launch Creative Spirit in Fairfax’s New Zealand offices in 2012. The initiative assists companies to employ people with intellectual disabilities across New Zealand and aims to inspire others to provide more workplace opportunities for willing employees. The idea for Creative Spirit started when she was having a conversation with a colleague who had a child with Down syndrome. He told Annamarie about the huge unemployment hurdle people with a disability had to leap to get a job. She asked him what she was doing now and he said she was at home sitting at home on the couch. “It makes me quite sad when you go into large organisations and they have all this work to do and you have these people who want to be part of the community and the workforce – everyone wants to have a conversation around the watercooler – so I thought we had to make a difference.” Annamarie got in touch with Attitude and started to understand about service providers and what was required to better cater for disabled people in the workplace. There are currently eight people with intellectual disabilities employed across Stuff ’s Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington and Christchurch offices and many more have been employed in other companies they connect with. She said the aim of Creative Spirit is to showcase the benefits of employing young people with intellectual disabilities into the workforce and to encourage other employers to do the same. “We want to shift the dial on that woeful unemployment statistic.” Annamarie offered some advice for employers who are looking to be more inclusive in their employment and recruitment. “You know what you do, it is really simple, you employ people with access needs and you ask them how we can make our workplace easier for you,” she said. “We look at our workplace from a physical point of view and if someone has a disability we ask them how we can make it work for them. It is as simple as that.” 10 Annamarie Jamieson is a firm believer that “inclusivity in the workplace should be like breathing… you don’t need to think about it, it should just happen”. The People and Culture Director at Stuff said it was a “huge deal” for the organisation to be recognised with an Attitude Award for its inclusiveness towards people with disabilities. The annual Attitude Awards celebrate the achievements of people who live with disabilities and Fairfax (now Stuff) won the Attitude ACC Employer Award, “It was fantastic for our people to be recognised for the work we do helping all our communities connect and thrive but more so it’s an opportunity for us to share the message so other companies can follow suit,” said Annamarie. “We are incredibly proud of this achievement.” The company, which owns Stuff.co.nz, Neighbourly and a wide range of newspapers across the country, runs a New Zealand sign language cafe COOP and also employs several people with intellectual disabilities as part of a programme called Creative Spirit. The sign language cafe was started two years ago and the objective was to introduce staff to New Zealand sign language via a great cup of coffee and to give someone who might be passionate about being a barista, a place where they can learn and grow. The Auckland office’s sign language cafe employs three deaf baristas and Annamarie said ordering their coffees had been an effective way to teach the 350-odd staff at the office some sign language. The additional benefit of this is we can understand about access needs and how our products can be made more accessible. “These are the conversations we have. I don’t believe you will ever make a business accessible until you employ people with disabilities so you can see how it works for them and understand their point of view.” Annamarie said that all employers in New Zealand must see diversity and inclusion as a must-do not a box-ticking exercise. Annamarie said they have a great inclusive culture at Stuff and everyone wants to support each other to be the very best they can be. There has been a huge groundswell of support. Annamarie said all employers in New Zealand must see diversity and inclusion as a must-do not a box-ticking exercise. “You can’t manage what you can’t measure. If you look around your organisation – ask yourself; “Am I really a diverse and inclusive workplace?” And you will know if you are or not by the diverse people in your organisation. If you aren’t then it is time you went about fixing it. It is really easy and the paybacks are immense. I encourage anyone to have a conversation with me about Creative Spirit or the Coffee Co-op, they are great programmes, they work, they are easy and they make a big difference.”
IMPROVING OUR UNDERSTANDING OF SPINAL CORD INJURIES Every year in New Zealand approximately 150 people are diagnosed with spinal cord impairment (SCI) through injury, medical or congenital causes. While life expectancy has improved for people with SCIs, the impairment brings with it progressive complexity for people’s lifelong self-management of it. To gain a deeper understanding of SCIs the New Zealand Spinal Cord Injury Registry (NZSCIR) was launched in August 2016. Every admission since then to New Zealand’s two spinal units – the Burwood Spinal Unit, part of Canterbury District Health Board (DHB), and the Auckland Spinal Rehabilitation Unit, part of Counties Manukau District Health Board – has been added to the database if the patient consents. The registry collates a person's demographic information (age, date of injury, gender, location, ethnicity, etc.) and clinical data (level and type of injury, admission and discharge dates, complications etc.) for their acute (straight after injury/incident) and rehabilitation phases. Participants are followed into the community, with questionnaires completed at one, two and five years and then every five years after their initial SCI. NZSCIR Burwood Clinical Director Raj Singhal said: “NZSCIR is probably one of the most important milestones in management of SCI patients in New Zealand. It is a dream come true for some of the senior colleagues. The scope of the registry is immense. It gives us the true incidence of SCI in New Zealand to compare our results with international community and it can be used for research and funding bodies alike.” Having data on the course of the impairment throughout someone’s life, the prevalence of SCIs and how they occurred can help researchers who meet the data access criteria, and clinicians, understand trends and where preventative measures should be concentrated. For instance, if SCIs were occurring at a high rate from older people falling out of hospital beds, introducing guard rails could help stop this. According to Dr Richard Smaill, who was a strong advocate in the register’s development, “following people as they age with the SCI is just crucial for research, clinical treatment and improving the overall wellbeing of people with SCI”. New Zealand is using the Canadian-based Rick Hansen Spinal Cord Injury Registry (RHSCIR), which began in 2004, and has over 6,000 patients registered. New Zealand is the first international site to collect information on the RHSCIR, with other international sites in China and Israel also enrolled. Richard said they are keen to add people with SCIs before last August to build up the database if funding allows. Raj said the coordinator role for the registry is the key to its success and will also need adequate funding in the future. The DHB continues to collaborate with the Rick Hansen Institute and is extremely grateful for their generous support in establishing and maintaining the NZSCIR. More information and statistics from the NZSCIR will be placed on the NZ Spinal Trust website www.nzspinaltrust.org.nz in the coming months. If you have any queries about the registry please contact Burwood NZSCIR Coordinator Tracey Croot on 03 383 7559 or at NZSCIR@cdhb.health.nz. 11
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