She had her tubes tied so that she could care for disabled child

THE baby's brain is only 1mm wide.

DEVOTED: Madam Yang and Yurong. PICTURE: GUANG MING DAILY

But her mother's love for her is immeasurable.

Huang Yurong, a 6-month-old Malaysian baby, suffers from hydrocephalus, a condition where fluid accumulates in the cavities of the brain.

Because of this, her brain has shrunk, and her head has ballooned to the size of a football.

Guang Ming Daily reported that she was also born with spinal deformities and her nerves are exposed. The baby also can't move the lower part of her body.

When her mother, Madam Yang Shu Jun, 38, was five months pregnant, she was told that her baby would develop spinal deformities and would be disabled for life.

She was then asked if she wanted to abort the child.

Madam Yang calmly replied: 'I want to keep her. I must give birth to her. Who can abandon their own flesh and blood?'

'I understood what I have to face if I went ahead. But I couldn't give her up. I told myself that it was a trial from heaven which I must accept.'

After Yurong was born, Madam Yang and her husband approached all the private hospitals in Penang to treat Yurong.

But they turned her down.

Eventually a hospital said yes, and it has now become Yurong's second home.

Madam Yang said Yurong, her third child, had already gone through a brain operation, which reduced the size of her head. It was about two times bigger before the surgery.

Yurong frequently waves her little arms to attract her mother's attention. But because she has kidney problems, Madam Yang has to drop by the hospital five times a day to collect her urine through a catheter, often in the middle of the night.

When asked if she was tired from taking care of Yurong, Madam Yang said: 'She's lovely, she never throws any tantrums. She is my child, I have no reason and no right to complain.'

She remembered quarrelling with a doctor after giving birth to Yurong.

She had asked for her Fallopian tubes to be cut, a process called ligation.

'I told the doctor that I wanted the operation so that I couldn't have any more children. I wanted to give Yurong and my two other girls my complete love and care.'

The doctor refused, but eventually gave in.

'I realised my daughter was a fighter. She has a strong will to live and is no normal child. I think my decision to give birth to her was the right one.'

Source: Guang Ming Daily

Disabled worker fails in discrimination plea

A father-of-four did not face discrimination by bosses at a Bradford job centre because of his disability, an employment tribunal has ruled today.

David Lambert, who uses a wheelchair and is often in severe pain following an industrial accident in 1996, claimed his managers should have taken his disability into account before verbally warning him for missing too many days off work at JobCentre Plus in Bradford.

Mr Lambert, 34, of Walden Drive, Heaton, Bradford, also should have been allowed to work from home occasionally because of sickness caused by a daily dose of painkillers, he told the Leeds Tribunal today.

He said: “All I can do is my best to get into work on a daily basis and what I would expect, especially from a Government department like JobCentre Plus, is that it takes my medical condition into account.”

But giving evidence the centre’s customer operations manager, Tim Dibb, said managers were justified in disciplining Mr Lambert in March, 2008, after he took more than 28 days sick leave in a year.

Because of Mr Lambert’s unpredictable condition, he would often call up the same morning saying he could not come to work, leaving about ten colleagues to deal with 50 extra compulsory interview appointments to find jobs for benefits claimants, he said.

And, if there were already too few staff in the office, job-seekers would have their interviews cancelled and simply turn up to sign on. Mr Lambert had been allowed to start work late when he was feeling ill, had been given a higher desk for his wheelchair and had been found a back office job when he found it difficult to interview job-seekers, Mr Dibb said.

And he told the tribunal there would be a “serious security risk” should Mr Lambert be allowed to take home his work – sensitive documents containing job-seekers’ personal details.

Tribunal judge David Burton sympathised with Mr Lambert but ruled JobCentre Plus managers had taken reasonable steps to account for his disability.

He said: “While this tribunal has considerable admiration for the claimant (Mr Lambert) for the efforts he makes to keep in work, we do not think that his claim is well-grounded and it is as a consequence of that that it is dismissed.”

Source: Bradford Telegraph Argus

Families of disabled children go without food as credit crunch takes its toll

Northern Ireland families with disabled children have become the latest victims of the credit crunch, with many forced to live without basic food and heating.

The worrying news comes after an investigation undertaken by local charity, Contact a Family, found that the soaring cost of life’s essentials has all but pushed some vulnerable households over the edge.

Chief among the findings of the study, entitled Counting the Costs, was that one in six disabled children lives in a household struggling to afford food and heating.

The survey also revealed that almost half of families have borrowed money from friends and family, with one in five using the cash to pay their heating bill. And, perhaps even more unsettling, the statistics showed that one in 14 children with a disability or medical condition is living under threat of losing their home.

Contact a Family surveyed almost 800 parent carers in the UK about their financial situation in the current economic crisis in order to determine the impact it is having on survival.

Frances Murphy, director of Contact a Family Northern Ireland, said the study has highlighted some unpleasant truths about the the effects of the current economic downturn.

“Our survey findings paint a shocking picture of what these often vulnerable families are experiencing,” he said.

Paula McManus from Dunmurry, mum to Gary who has cerebral palsy and Rachel who has a heart condition, said the spiralling cost of commodities is proving difficult to accommodate.

“My children are often sick in the night because of their conditions, so we have the washing machine on three or four times a day,” she said.

“Gary can’t walk or move around much so doesn’t generate his own heat which means we have the heating on up to 12 hours a day. I’ve noticed a big jump in gas and electricity bills which is difficult to afford.”

As the housing market slumps 18% of families with a disabled child said they are struggling with mortgage and rent payments and have been in arrears in the last 12 months.

To make ends meet a quarter of families have approached charities for financial help and one in four has taken out a loan.

Families concerned about their finances should telephone the Contact a Family national freephone helpline 0808 808 3555.

-Belfast Telegraph, United Kingdom

Support Grows for Disabled Job Seekers

Image via Wikipedia

Lucy Shi, a job seeker who has a genetic condition that causes short stature, says she's happy to be singled out as a disability candidate as she hunts for a position in New York.

A graduate of New York University, Ms. Shi, 25, recently interviewed with several Wall Street firms at a recruiting event geared toward people with disabilities who aim to develop professional business careers. "It's hard to have a disability that's so visible, and it's just nice to be able to talk to recruiters without competing with the rest of the world," says Ms. Shi, who believes many interviewers view her as a child because of her height.

There are 22 million working-age Americans with disabilities who have come of age under the Americans With Disabilities Act -- passed 16 years ago this month -- which helps to prevent job discrimination against qualified disabled individuals. But only 38% of the nation's working-age disabled have a job, compared with 78% of able-bodied people.

Over the past few years, companies have begun taking bigger steps to bring more of the disabled into the professional work force. The latest effort is partly due to the efforts of Rich Donovan, a former Merrill Lynch trader who has cerebral palsy, a disability that limits his speech and movement.

Mr. Donovan recalls the resistance he met from many recruiters who weren't sure he was nimble enough to perform the physical aspects of a busy trader's job. Even his mentors at Columbia University's business school tried to talk him out of it, saying he'd make a "fine risk manager." He was hired at Merrill and quickly hatched a plan to get more disabled people hired at the firm.

Mr. Donovan's idea was based on the premise that corporate America should recruit and give qualified people with disabilities the same sort of opportunities that his firm -- and most big companies -- already had in place for minorities and women.

Merrill agreed to give it a try, and in 2006 Mr. Donovan founded LimeConnect, with the company as its first partner. Today, the organization matches disabled college-level and professional candidates through private recruiting efforts led by its four major partners: Merrill, Goldman Sachs, PepsiCo and Google. Last fall, Lime helped its partners source more than 300 disabled internship candidates from two dozen universities, including Harvard, M.I.T., Princeton and Georgetown. In May, Lime invited 60 candidates for job interviews in New York; at least a dozen have been invited back for further interviews.

It isn't just a goodwill gesture, say Lime's partner companies. "There's a business case for hiring people with disabilities. This is a market we need to, and want to, tap into as much as we can," says Ron Parker, chief diversity and inclusion officer at PepsiCo.

Corporations are casting a wider net for good reasons. With the labor pool shrinking, U.S. employers will face a shortage of 20 million workers by 2020 as baby boomers retire. What's more, one out of every 10 consumers is a person with a disability, representing $200 billion in annual buying power, according to the National Organization on Disability in Washington.

"We want to be an organization that reflects the globally diverse audience that our search engine and tools serve," says Jordan Bookey, Google's global-diversity and inclusion programs manager, who used Lime to find applicants for its new diversity summer internship program.

Building a disability candidate pipeline isn't easy, as many companies still lack a centralized talent pool from which to draw. Still, companies can join corporate partnerships, such as Lime, or become members of one of several nonprofit organizations geared toward linking disabled professionals with corporations.

One group, the National Business & Disability Council, runs a diversity-internship program called Emerging Leaders. The program was founded by consulting company Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. and now has more than 30 corporate members, including AIG, KPMG, Liz Claiborne and Procter & Gamble. It has placed 75 students in summer internships since 2005.

Booz Allen's efforts to hire people with disabilities began at the top: Its chairman and CEO, Ralph Shrader, has a son with disabilities. "Finding a job -- and gaining the significant benefits that come with employment -- is difficult, but when the right opportunity comes together, the rewards for the employee and the company are extraordinary," Dr. Shrader says.

The group also hosts an annual invitation-only Wall Street job fair for candidates seeking jobs at financial-services firms, including Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs. Last fall, Merrill also hosted a Wall Street consortium with business and government leaders to explore strategies for recruiting and retaining people with disabilities.

"We're making an intellectual-capital decision," says Elizabeth Wamai, head of global campus recruiting at Merrill. "To continue to win in this business, we need the creative eclectic approaches that different people bring."

Companies like KPMG say they also work to attract candidates by changing their workplace to include more professionals with disabilities. Creating an employee network for the disabled, establishing disabled-specific mentoring programs, or changing benefits to allow for time off for medical issues can make a difference.

KPMG recently launched a disabilities network, and this year, Eastman Kodak, IBM and Pepsi all landed on DiversityInc's Top 10 Companies for People with Disabilities list in part because they run employee networks geared toward disabilities. PepsiCo's EnAble network gained fame when it sponsored a Super Bowl commercial featuring two deaf employees.

By SUZANNE ROBITAILLE- Wall Street Journal

New EU legislation to give more rights to disabled air passengers

Image via Wikipedia
New EU legislation has been introduced to give disabled travellers more rights. Disabled air passengers will receive more help when using EU airports.

Disabled travellers are to benefit from the new EU legislation that states all passengers with a disability or suffering from reduced mobility must be given suitable help throughout the whole airport process, reports leading charity Leonard Cheshire Disability.

Airports must give disabled passengers assistance from checking in to boarding the plane. This responsibility previously fell to both airlines and airports. To ensure that the holiday continues in the same vein, holidaylettings.co.uk offers wheelchair-adapted holiday homes for holidaymakers set to benefit from the new legislation.

The new EU legislation for disabled passengers has been welcomed by Leonard Cheshire Disability, which has been campaigning for greater rights for disabled passengers through its Now Boarding campaign. Katie Turner from the charity said: "Disabled people are still facing barriers when using air travel, when they should enjoy the same opportunities that most of us take for granted.

"We want to see air travel providers take this new directive seriously and equip their staff with the skills and understanding to support disabled customers."

A recent survey by the charity revealed that 61 per cent of respondents had experienced difficulties when boarding a plane. Disabled passengers will now be able to voice their concerns with the Equality and Human Rights Commission to ensure that the new legislation is properly enforced.

This story was brought to you by holidaylettingsco.uk, the UK's No.1 holiday home website.