Getting A Life In Wayne and Oakland Counties, Michigan:
Using Self-Determination as a Foundation for Organizational Change

By Pam Walker, Ph.D.

Many want to label and categoize Self-Determination as a program, a home, or a budgetIt is about "getting a life." It is about living in houses and homes, not residential settings or sites.

The Purpose of Public Funding for Individuals with Disabilities

By Tom Nerney

The failure of public policy to adequately address the issue of the common humanity of individuals with disabilities has resulted in the substitution of human services and human service environments and programs for real life and high purpose. Individuals with disabilities have become human service subjects within a system of long-term supports that has no expectations that common life goals based on universal human aspirations can add great depth to the notion of addressing the health and welfare of individuals with disabilities.

The Assault on Ashley

By Tom Nerney

The mutilation of this girl named Ashley should come as no surprise. By now the entire disability community is familiar with what happened to Ashley, the justification on the grounds of convenience for the parents/caretakers and the defense of these procedures on the basis of diminished citizenship by Peter Singer in the NY Times. Part of the outrage that some of us feel is simply that others are not outraged at all. This should give us pause. The uncomfortable question I would like to pose is simply this: to what extent are we complicit in this lack of outrage from the media and the general public?

Editorial about the International Conference on Self-Determination

By Tom Watkins

Those with disabilities deserve same freedom to choose as everyone Freedom. Throughout world history, people have fought and died for the choice to live free. A movement to bring the basic concepts of choice, freedom and authority to people with disabilities, called "self-determination," is taking hold in Michigan.

Self-Determination: Individual Costs, System Costs, and Quality of Life

By Tom Nerney

Self-Determination is a movement to change long term care by shifting power over resources directly to individuals and their family and allies. As such it requires fundamental structural changes (fiscal management agencies, independent brokering and highly personal budgets) and a leadership commitment that moves the present system from a highly paternalistic and costly one to a system that promotes both freedom and responsibility while achieving better value for the public dollars that are appropriated.

The Meaning of Self-Determined Lives in
Publicly Funded Systems of Long Term Care

By Tom Nerney

This first written description of "Self-Determination" was based on a set of principles, and in a demonstration of their efficacy, funded by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, targeted a group of individuals with significant brain injury and a group with developmental disabilities beginning in 1993. The principles have remained as a foundation for this effort ever since.