Center for Self-Determination Policy Analysis
Of New Jersey's Self-Determination Effort

By Tom Nerney and Kathy Harris, Esq.

The meaning of self-determination since its inception a decade ago has always rested on a set of principles: Freedom, Authority, Support, Responsibility and now Confirmation of the important role that individuals with disabilities must play in the development of this movement. In this ten-year time frame our understanding of self-determination has deepened and broadened. New and highly relevant issues surface as more and more individuals in states across the country begin to implement self-determination for themselves, and issues surface as well for the systems that are the stewards of public funds. Just as individuals with disabilities and families have taught us so much as they gain control of the funding, so, too, have we learned about the systems change elements that make the goal of self-determination more attainable.

Communicating Self-Determination: Freedom, Authority, Support and Responsibility

By Tom Nerney

With the vast extension of self-determination projects across the country and the wide adoption of the principles of self-determination, it may be helpful to step back for a moment and reflect on what we have learned thus far about some of the technical and structural issues associated with truly successful individual budgets, support brokering and fiscal intermediaries. Not every issue is yet crystal clear and it is anticipated that some ambiguity may remain especially in those projects that are still experimenting with systems change.

An Affirmation of Community; A Revolution of Vision And Goals Creating a Community to Support All People Including Those With Disabilities

By Tom Nerney, Richard F. Crowley, with Bruce Kappel

Maybe it is the times, or maybe it is the fact that we have had some time to examine how it is that we interact with and support children and adults with disabilities in communities. Or maybe it is simply that people with disabilities are sick and tired of being controlled by others. Whatever the reason, self-determination has emerged as the agenda of the 90's. As Bob Williams says: "Self-determination is just another word for freedom." Freedom to live with whom you want, freedom to live a productive life, freedom to attend school with your friends and brothers and sisters, freedom to get around your community, freedom to love and reject.

Our Declaration Of Freedom

By Tom Nerney

Whereas, Individuals with disabilities have to trade their basic freedoms in order to obtain needed supports in the present human service system; and

Whereas, Individuals with disabilities are kept virtually impoverished in the richest human service system in the world; and

Whereas, Individuals with disabilities are often declared "incompetent" and denied even elementary human and civil rights under current guardianship statutes;

Fithy Lurce: Creating Better Value In Long Term Supports

By Tom Nerney

In the early 1990's the first monograph on self-determination (Nerney, T. & Crowley, R., 1994) began with a recitation of "simple truths":
All communities have as members people with disabilities. They are people of worth and value. They belong to family and neighborhoods. They are citizens, fellow workers, customers, and parishioners. They are one of us. Members of our families, our churches, our neighborhoods, people with disabilities who are our friends, our co-workers, our customers, are unwittingly being harmed.

Organizing A Movement

By Dennis Harkins

The following outline is written in hopes of generating discussion and encouraging action. Its genesis was a discussion of grassroots organizing that emerged during a Self-Determination Immersion Learning event last April in Nevada. Participants in that event from across the country identified a need to find ways to come together within their communities, their states, and across the country to create needed changes in their agencies, communities, and service systems based upon the idea and principles of self-determination. For the sole purpose of furthering and widening that discussion, this paper attempts to sketch an outline of how we might create and sustain a movement among people with disabilities, families and other allies in support of self-determination.

Personal Agents and Independent Brokers

By Ellen M. Cummings

For a variety of reasons, the transformation of case management to support individuals in building lives full of opportunity and relationships, rather than placing in programs, has not occurred as so many had wished. In the past several years, the name case manager has been changed to support coordinator, just as teams are now called circles, but little in the work or the process has been changed. The reasons vary place to place, from lack of will to lack of leadership to lack of resources to lack of trust to lack of knowledge. There are many in current unchanged systems, however, who very much want to get away from desks and paper in order to spend a maximum amount of their time doing something different have the time and support necessary to help people with disabilities build lives, but are unable to get out from under the administrative/monitoring functions within the traditional system. Creativity and spirit become stifled in many situations and once again people who have disabilities remain in their perpetual state of waiting