'Xmas Scrooges' fight caregiver-pay ruling

Cliff Robinson with his disabled children Marita and Johnny. Photo / Richard Robinson

The Ministry of Health is to lodge an appeal after the High Court ruled last week that parents caring for disabled adult children are eligible for financial support.

The High Court backed a Human Rights Tribunal ruling which said a ministry policy to pay carers only if they were not related to the patient was discriminatory.

The potential implications of the decision are far wider than the health and disability sector, National Health Board director of national services Kelvin Moffatt said yesterday.

"The ministry has been advised by Crown Law that the decision contains issues of law that have significant implications for other Bill of Rights cases and more broadly for Government decision-making."

Cliff Robinson, 75 of Thames, yesterday described the decision to appeal as coming from "Scrooges at Christmas time".

The father of two disabled adult children said he could not believe that highly paid Government officials would come crashing down on a group of hard-working New Zealand parents, most of them solo parents, who had struggled most of their lives to give their disabled children the love and compassion they deserved.

"But we can hold our heads high and they can't."

As for financial implications, Mr Robinson said there were always costs when new social policy came in. "I mean, what about when DPB first came in, or social security, or equal pay for women, or paid parental leave?

"Would governments dare now not have equal pay for women? The same arguments were put up."

Parents of disabled children, represented by the Office of Human Rights Proceedings, claimed discrimination on the grounds of their family status.

Ministry policy had assessed the severely disabled adult children as eligible for paid care but not if that caregiver was a family member.

The parents' lawyers said the level of care provided was above that of the "natural support" a parent could be expected to provide to a child.

- additional reporting by NZPA