Culture, Intersectionality, Identity, and Disability

Understanding culture is important to person-centered thinking, planning, and practices. Culture influences how we view health, mental health, well-being, illness, and disability. Culture influences what a person believes is important to them and their families. Since we are all cultural beings, programs striving to deliver person-centered thinking, planning, and practices must be responsive to culture. … Read more

Guiding People Through Change*

Individuals with and without disabilities are often quite uncomfortable with change, for all sorts of understandable reasons. This can lead them to resist it and oppose it. This is why it’s important to understand how people are feeling as change proceeds, so that you can guide them through it and so that – in the … Read more

Standing with Jon

In the early days (late 1980s) of person-centered thinking and planning, Essential Lifestyle Planning was created by Michael Smull and Susan Burke Harrison to support people moving from institutions to community living arrangements. In the early 1990s, Jon was one of the first individuals outside of an institution to work with Michael and Claudia Bolton on … Read more

ANDI for Consumers

Forty plus years ago (1982), Nancy Gardner and I wrote this piece. We called it the ANDI for Consumers. It was an easy-to-read version of the ANDI (A Normalization and Development Instrument) that was, in turn, based on the PASS (Program Analysis of Service Systems) by Wolf Wolfensberger). California DDS used the ANDI to evaluate … Read more