Decision Making
Decision making is an essential practice for fostering self-advocacy, independence, and well-being of students with disabilities. This empowers students to take control of their own lives, make informed decisions, build confidence, and create a sense of ownership over their own future.
Individuals with disabilities should have the opportunity to make as many of their own decisions as possible but also may need support in some areas. Those supports could range from natural supports, releases of information, representative payee to some guardianship. Being informed on the variety of options available will allow families and students the ability to make informed decisions to allow students to be as independent as possible as an adult.
The Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities (BPDD) created toolkits to help students and families navigate supported decision-making.
Disability Rights Iowa, created a supported decision-making brochure that defines supported-decision making vocabulary as well as defines options and shares a visual of least restrictive to most restrictive.
This graphic represents the range of decision making options available to adult students. Options on the left side of the graphic are the least limiting, meaning they have the smallest impact on the legal rights of an individual. Moving from left to right the decision making options increase the limits to the legal rights of the individual. Educators should not be giving advice, only providing this information and presenting the options. Connecting families to the Aging & Disability Resource Center (ADRC) would be helpful as a resource to help families navigate their options.
