| Overview: |
Self-determination is not a specific program with a menu of services and a certain way to do them. Instead, self-determination is a person-centered, person-directed process that depends on the person. Its principles are freedom, authority, autonomy, and responsibility. Associated values are respect, choice, ownership, support, and opportunity. If self-determination is to be successful, those who supply and fund services need to change how they think about persons with disabilities.
They must go from:
Seeing people with disabilities as having limitations to valuable citizens who have many talents and abilities
Seeing people with disabilities as service recipients to seeing them as individuals with rights and entitlements
Providing agency-controlled services to supporting person-directed services
Systems and agency control of financial resources to individual control
Control to empowerment
This research was supported by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research in the U.S. Department of Education. #712
Kennedy, M., & Lewin, L. (n.d.) Fact sheet: Summary of self-determination. Syracuse, NY: Center on Human Policy.
Keyword: Self-determination |
