A day for gender equality in Oslo

The Løvemammaene have today attended the launch of the Equality and Diversity Committee's NOU "På høy tid" at Kulturhuset, followed by BPA marking outside the Ministry of Health and Care.

The lion mothers have previously given both oral and written input to the Equality and Diversity Committee. Back then, we began our input as follows, and it is still just as valid.

"We live in a society that makes constant medical progress, and thus more and more children are saved. But the follow-up after birth is, as the National Audit Office also states, far too poor. Put to the fore: We cannot continue to save children, when measures and services after birth do not meet the needs or what one is actually entitled to."

"For the Løvemammaene, it is incredibly important that families who have children with illness or functional variation should be able to live like other families. No one asks the parents of a healthy child if they are responsible for the child and can make choices for their child, but as soon as parents have a child with a variety of functions, the municipality enters the picture and says that they are responsible for how services are provided and carried out, and how the family should live their lives. Families who have children with illness or functional variation must have the right to live life on their own terms - not those of the municipality or the public. Because then the possibility of being able to live free, independent and well-lived lives is limited, while passivity, limitations, isolation and discrimination are allowed to continue."

The Løvemammaene are happy to see that the Equality and Diversity Committee has referred to several of our inputs in The NOU, and that many of the committee's recommendations reflect this. The committee has done a solid piece of work, and this report will be important in the future.

Work is now starting to fine-tune the report and then deliver a response to the consultation when the time comes.

The trip then went to the Ministry of Health and Care. Today is 500 days since the BPA committee delivered its report on the BPA scheme (NOU 2021:12 "Self-governed is well-governed") to Health Minister Ingvild Kjerkol, and very little has happened since then. On that occasion, Uloba collected 10,000 signatures which they handed over to Health Minister Ingvild Kjerkol's state secretary, Ellen Rønning-Arnesen. Kjerkol himself has been challenged by Uloba to accept the signatures himself several times, but has (disappointingly) not wanted to do so.

Had this report dealt with a problematic transport offer to and from the oil platforms in the North Sea, neither a red nor a blue government would have let 500 days pass without taking action! But when it comes to people with illness and functional variation, it is clearly not that important...