Access by Various artists

all of these people should remember who they are supposed to be serving

Fundamental, eh. Thank you for writing this.

Ministries try so hard to solve potential problems, they don't realise that their actions create a plethora of new ones. And curiously, those problems didn't exist prior to the 'well intentioned but misguided solution'

Big humungous sigh of exasperation. "They didn't think it through" does not even begin to cover it.

The Ministry of Education did a major recontracting of taxi services just a few years ago. It took months. Now they are doing it again. I'm sure there will be some cost cutting in there too. When you consider how long some kids spend in taxis each day and how vulnerable many of them are, I hope there is some serious and intensive training for the new drivers including in different impairment conditions.

That was such beautiful writing Fiona. So very sad .. and utterly stupid.
The very best wishes to you and Claudia .. and Trevor who sounds a great man.
Send your blog to your MP and whoever the Minister is who would deal with this situation which is the result of their policy.

Ministry are doing what Ministries always do, introducing rules to protect themselves not the people they are there to support.
Rule 1 Make sure there is no comeback on us.
Rule 2. Make sure there is someone else to take the blame. etc,etc,etc

Change and consequences...?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11827958

A boy with cancer has missed school on four out of the past seven school days because of a "severe shortage" of disability taxis.

To me, the most amazing part of that story is that Auckland Transport have somehow taken it upon themselves to stop funding hoist modifications for taxis in the region. How did they determine current and future levels of need?

whoever the Minister is who would deal with this situation

Sorry but who do you think will have signed off on the daft decision in the first place? Unlikely to act now unless there is more than one voice and some media pressure.

How did they determine current and future levels of need?

Or did they simply say, this is where we can cut costs? The funding stopped "3 or 4 years ago". Perhaps no-one noticed at the time but now there are not enough modified taxis to meet demand. Presumably there was no further monitoring of the taxi fleet.

All hail AT, they've saved us ratepayers from the legions of taxi drivers wanting to install hoists in their vans purely because they think hoists are sexy. Because that HAS to be why they were asking for the funding, right?