An Irishwoman's Diary

(Irish Times 2nd of August 1993)

Rose Doyle

Jana Overbo is gentle-voiced, fast speaking and deceptively low-key about her achievements in 30 years of life. A dynamo who doesn’t accept she’s anything out of the ordinary, who frets she should be doing more, she left the California sun for the rainy variables of the Irish Climate10 months ago. She’s not sure if this was due to fate or was just a happy accident. What she is sure about apart from the lousy summer and having broke her leg twice, is that she’ll never regret coming here.

Disabled Irish people among, among others are pretty glad to have her around, too. Ms. Overbo, wheelchair-bound and a sufferer from rheumatoid arthritis since she was nine, is one of the forces behind the burgeoning Center fro Independent Living, which aims to make self-determination an option for disabled people. Quite separately, she has got herself a job with the Bank of Ireland.

Since November last, she has been carrying out a survey on how the bank can improve access and facilities for the disabled in all its branches. Part of her work involves staff awareness and training. It’s a job she created herself, and then put to the bank.

“I couldn’t live here without a job and I didn’t want one which could be taken by an Irish person,” she explains, practical as in all things. “I applied with the same programme to Allied Irish Banks, but it was the Bank of Ireland which went for it. It’s brilliant that they think the disabled should have the same access as non-disabled people.”

Disability Culture

Her life story is all a bit like that - forging ahead, finding ways to do things, pushing herself towards independence and, always pushing to eliminate barriers for all disabled people.

She was born and lived in North Dakota until she was 18. “It’s very flat there, very rural; a bit like Ireland in ways. There are no big cities and people are very friendly,” she says. “The culture is similar to here, too, and the basic diet is meat, potatoes and veg.” Rheumatoid arthritis struck when she was 18, she’d decided that her parents “deserved some time alone.”

So she left for Berkeley, California to study psychology. “I’d no idea I was heading to a whole disability culture. Berkeley is the Mecca of the disabled; all sorts of programmes have originated there. It changed me greatly, especially what I thought and been told, was “suitable” for a disabled person to do.”

She abandoned psychology and instead studied TV production. This led to an internship with CBS in San Francisco and to the making of documentaries and chat shows. She was there six years, was “just about getting ready to move on when I met Liam O’Maonlai.”

The Hothouse Flowers lead singer fired an interest in things Irish, and she began to learn the language, moving from a passion for heavy rock to one for the bodhran, whistle and pipe.

It was inevitable that she would visit Ireland. “Two years ago last month I came for a vacation and to look around. I went all over the country and very quickly realised the options for disabled people were extremely limited. I met a lot of people with energy and determination who were forced to rely on family or residential care. Access to public buildings was not in general, good and about 80 per cent of disabled people were unemployed.”

Friends said I was crazy

She met and discussed the philosophy of independent living with a small group of disabled people. They all agreed something could, and should, be done. When she went back to the U.S., she couldn’t settle in Berkeley. In February last year, she found herself back here “sussing out whether I could move out here”. The Bank of Ireland clinched it. “Friends said I was crazy to move to Ireland but I knew, deep down, that I could do it.”

”She lives in Sandymount, in a ground floor, comfortable but not overly spacious apartment. She likes the area and says the sense of community and village atmosphere are just what she was looking for. When she first arrived, the Center for Independent Living, and its pilot INCARE programme to train and provide personal assistants for the disabled, took up most of her time.

It’s a system she operated in the U.S. She is tireless in her efforts to see it implemented here.

Ms. Overbo is adamant that the availability of trained personal assistants allows disabled people options beyond those relying on family, charity and even institutionalised care. The INCARE programme is currently training 15 disabled people in personal assistance management, and 35 non-disabled trainees to act as a personal assistant.

Funding is a mixture of what can be raised, money from the EC Horizon programme and a recent £5o,ooo grant from the Minister for Social Welfare, Dr Woods. “It’s about 70 per cent more cost effective to pay a personal assistant than to put a person in institutionalised care,” Ms Overbo points out. “Not to mention the difference in the quality of life of the disabled.”

In Tracy and Deborah she has two personal assistants of her own. They work as a group, and do very well together. “It’s not just about washing my hair or getting me up in the mornings,” says Ms. Overbo. They help me with work, faxing, administration, shopping, maybe even go out with me in the evenings.”

Head for the Gaelteacht

It’s not a stopgap job either – she had a PA stay with her for eight years. She says she’s found, too, that the quality of those training as personal assistants here is higher than in the U.S.

Her Irish is not yet as fluent as she’d like it to be. But she plans a month or so in the Gaelteacht, when she can find the time – maybe in Dun Chaoin because she has such fond memories of an earlier visit. “It was in a pub there that I hear d everyone speaking Irish together for the first time. It was wonderful. I became the centre of interest , the Yank who was learning Irish instead of the Yank in a wheelchair!”

She has no idea how long her stay here will be. “I hope it’ll be permanent. But maybe some day I’ll be drawn back to California for the sun…”

She welcomes calls from anyone interested in the INCARE programme. The number for the Center for Independent Living, in the Brunswick Street, Dublin is 873 0986

Return to top of page

An Irishwoman's Diary

Contact Us