Self-Determination in the Middle of the Long Road to Freedom
In North Carolina last week there was an International Conference on Self-Determination, which covered topics from guardianship to techniques for self advocacy to the urgent need for Medicaid reform. Local news coverage, including both video and full transcript, is available at News 14.
The coverage echoed a lot of the points that have been brought up up here.
Rusty Bradstock is intellectually disabled and mentors disabled students at UNC Greensboro.
Real jobs that fit a person's needs:
The council said only 22 percent of the developmentally disabled have jobs... "Micro enterprise is customized self employment. It gives you an opportunity to work when you want to work, be off when you need to be off," Taylor [a parent] said.
Community living arrangements that both enable freedom and use money more wisely:
Advocates say better use should be made of Medicaid funding, including promoting shared living between those with and without disabilities.
--including the need for legislation such as the Community Choice Act (take action!)
It's a companionship mode of providing support that doesn't rely on very expensive hourly shift expense in most long-term care facilities like nursing homes and places like that," said Tom Nerney, director of the Center for Self-Determination.
And most of all, the message that for self-advocates,
"What we're talking about is the freedom that we're all given. the right to pursue our own happiness," Murray [Director of the Disability Action Network] said.
In my home state as I am looking ahead to the Oregon Disability Megaconference which I'm hoping will provide opportunities for some similar dialogues, I am also looking behind. 20 or 30 years ago people with developmental disabilities were mostly locked away, denied any self-determination at all. There's an awful lot of work still left to do as the discussions in North Carolina show--the need for massive reform in networking, employment, housing, and civil rights. A lot of us are still locked away, and worse. But the fact that some self-advocates can get together at all and discuss these concerns means we've gotten somewhere too.
That forward momentum can lead us, perhaps slowly, but still steadily, to self-determination, freedom, and right to pursue our own happiness.
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