Slidin' into home: Supporting self-determination through personal support agents and service brokerage strategies

Abstract

The last three decades of deinstitutionalization have not fulfilled their promise of creating full lives in inclusive communities for persons with intellectual disabilities. There are too many adults still living with their aging parents, or in regimented group homes that seem like nothing more than smaller versions of the institutions they left. The recent initiatives for self-determination and self-directed services hope to restructure our approach to providing support and thereby finally fulfill the promise of building inclusive communities. This paper provides an informal case study of how one young man and his family have benefited from this move to self-directed services. We tell the story of Ian Ferguson moving into a home of his own. As part of that story, we describe two support strategies that have emerged as crucial to the success of his living a life on his own. We describe the Personal Support Agent (PSA) and Community Service Brokerage (CSB), connect them with the principles of self-determination and report how they have actually been applied in Ian's life.