Your SLS Training Tool Box and A Guide to Single Household Supported Living Services

While both are classics, they are still packed with relevant information if you’re involved with supported living services. Your SLS Training Tool Box was written by Claudia Bolton and Bill Allen in 2001. While this document will help you get started in understanding supported living services, your best teachers are the people you support and … Read more

All About Person-Centered Outcomes

In order for a plan to be successful, the team has to know what the person being supported wantsto accomplish. Staff need to understand what is being worked towards in order to better supportthe person. When the team and person identifies the outcome, it creates a shared vision for thefuture. Read about developing person-centered outcomes … Read more

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

What Happens When You Pay for Your Own Services?

By John O’Brien In most places, the government still pays people who give services. Services like a place to live, help with finding a job, support in keeping a place of your own. In some places, things are starting to change! The government is starting to give money to people with developmental disabilities to pay for their own … Read more

Promising Practices for Person-Centered Plans

What exactly does a “good”person-centered plan include or look like? What are some outcomes we might anticipate for the person? This resource outlines promising practices for person-centered plan documentation anddescribes indicators of truly person-centered plans for quality monitoring purposes.