“This policy should exist even if we didn’t.”
A. Purpose
We recognize the trauma that ableism causes and commit to continually assessing behavior and systems to ensure our effect on people’s lives matches our intent. We seek to establish the highest quality of acceptance for disabled people and be a groundbreaking example for the world. This policy’s purpose is not to correct disabilities; it is to correct the system that disparages disabled people.
B. Principles
Rights. Rights are circumstances we have an ethical imperative to ensure they occur for everyone. We must use all reasonable ability to achieve it and it must not result in diminishing others’ rights.
Discrimination. Discrimination, in the social justice sense, is behavior that makes it unfairly harder for a less privileged minority to exist. It can be intentional or unintentional, systemic or personal, an action or an inaction, and can treat people by the same standard or by different standards. Ableism is discrimination affecting people’s disabilities. It is a pattern of behavior that makes it harder for disabled people to live good lives. This is the high standard we hold behavior to, despite whatever legal sense also applies. To disambiguate, any mention of discrimination in other policies will be assumed to be in the legal sense unless mentioned otherwise.
People have the right to be free from discrimination.
Intent and Effect. Evaluating intent is relevant for choosing discipline methods but does not excuse any harm done. We can judge the quality of intentions by noting the behavior after they realize the effect they had. Think about a hit and run. They might not have intended to hit someone, but they did intend to do harm by choosing the leave instead of helping. This also applies if someone chooses not to observe their harmful effects, for example refusing to listen to complaints.
People have the right…
Implicit Bias.
People have the right…
Disability Cultures. Culture is learned behavior, values, and beliefs that assist a people to get their human needs met. Cultures form by people with common disabilities. These cultures must be respected to the same extent as cultures around other protected groups.
People have the right…
Dynamic Disabilities. Ability is not always binary and will not be assumed as such. If we see functioning in one person, we will not irrationally assume they can always function at that task without support. Circumstances that create variability include stress, exhaustion, and emerging skills.
People have the right…
Gatekeeping. A gatekeeper is a person who has been given the authority to decide whether or not another person gets to have support in the form of a good, service, or accommodation.
People have the right…
Microaggressions. Microaggressions are implicit messages that convey inferiority or blame to an identity.
People have the right…
Presuming Competence. Presuming competence means knowing anything is possible with the right support.
People have the right…
Least Restrictive Environment. To ensure safety, we place limits on people’s autonomy in a reasonable manner as determined by their knowledge, skills, and dispositions. This is ethical discipline. A least restrictive environment means we will continuously evaluate these limits to adjust for their changing knowledge, skills, and dispositions.
People have the right to the least restrictive environment.
Functioning Labels. Generalizing functioning levels does not help us support each person with their specific needs. It does allow us to form prejudices about people. Those labeled high functioning tend to get support denied to them and those labeled low functioning tend to get decisions made for them. We will encourage people to instead refer to the functioning for specific tasks.
People have the right to be supported with the identity labels that they prefer.
Public Accountability.
People have the right…
Nothing About Us Without Us. Decisions should not be made about a person without including the person.
People have the right to meaningfully contribute to any decision about their well-being.
Dignity of Risk.
People have the right to make mistakes and learn from them just as non-disabled people do.
Presuming Competence. All people are capable of learning, thinking, and communicating. We should assume that with the right support, they can achieve anything other people can. When it’s shown that someone can’t understand something, we seek to provide more support rather than exclude them from a task.
People have the right…
Right to Adult Status.
People have the right…
Invisible Disabilities.
People have the right…
Plain Language.
People have the right…
Person-Centeredness.
People have the right…
Reasonable Accommodations.
D. Problems Example Experiences ->
- Derek Hearthtower, North Bay Regional Center
- Henny Kupferstein, San Diego Regional Center
Retaliation. Retaliation is delivering punishment in response to self-advocacy. This results in discouraging us from improving our lives.
Invalidation. Doubting experiences prevents us from developing empathy for people and reinforces our preconceptions.
Acts of Selfishness. Often gatekeepers make denials merely citing inconvenience as the reason. It can be necessary to accept an inconvenience to relieve someone else’s suffering. Justice is often inconvenient.
No Apologizing. No progress is possible without acknowledging mistakes and regaining trust.
Medical Necessity.
Infantilization. When forms and policies list clients as children, adults are deterred from accessing the program.
Secret Meetings. Making gatekeeping decisions in private denies people the opportunity to counter and hold accountable any of our reasoning that might be flawed or prejudiced.
Exploitation of Ignorance. Being uninformed prevents clients from choosing options they don’t know they have.
Unaccountability.
Rigid Denials. Sometimes gatekeepers say a request from a client isn’t going to work without even trying to find another solution. When referring to good/service/accommodation requests, “No” shuts down conversations and also makes any challenges into a challenge of one’s authority. Change “no” or “that’s not how it works” to “let’s find another way.” Only through collaborative discussion can we find creative solutions.
Double Empathy Problem.
Resource Barriers. We acknowledge that the more time, energy, and expenses people are required to spend on getting us to support them, the less time, energy, and expenses people have to work on personal development and obtaining good lives. Excessively requiring these resources for people is an unjust burden. We should seek to do more than merely set up barriers against support and determine how big those barriers should be.
Toxic Positivity.
Gaslighting.
For Your Own Good. This means ignoring someone’s autonomy and making a decision against their wishes that results in them being hurt to achieve some other positive benefit from the actor’s perspective. This is sometimes disguised as “acting in someone’s best interest.”
E. Practices
Natural Supports. The existence of natural supports cannot be used to deny a good or service unless the regional center performs an investigation and determines there is ample funds available to purchase it or time to work on it. Ample funds shall be described as enough funds that if the client or willing circle of support were to pay for it, it would not cause detriment to their quality of life, both physically and mentally.
Problems Addressed:
Donation Drives. A donation drive can only be suggested if it isn’t being used as a reason to deny services (as an available generic resource). Without this limit we would be able to deny any good or service we choose to deny.
Problems Addressed:
Expulsion Without Notice. If a provider nonconsensually expels a client from their program (for reasons other than discipline and safety) without the mandatory 30 day notice, that provider must readmit the client for the remainder of the 30 days not given. If they refuse, it demonstrates an unwillingness to learn from their mistakes and is grounds for denial of contract renewal.
Problems Addressed:
Client Advisory Committee. Each regional center shall be mandated to create and support a client advisory committee.
—Phase 1: These following initiatives are to be completed within 1 year after adoption of this policy.—
Support Network. In collaboration with the Client Advisory Committee, create and manage a support network for clients who identify as being discriminated against by service providers, regional centers, or DDS. This can include, among other options determined by clients, support groups, peer mentoring, and online community facilitation. These services must include a discrimination hotline. Clients can call or write about experiences with any service provider, regional center, or DDS staff. A hotline worker must only validate, not invalidate experiences. A hotline worker will collect expressed experiences, answer questions, and not take any disciplinary action. If the client consents, their experience shall be publicly available with any information that can be used to identify parties redacted, including by deduction. No one deserves to struggle alone. A selection of these experiences must be used in staff training. We hope this will ensure our work culture aligns with anti-ableism values.
Problems Addressed:
Self-Advocacy Dashboard. There shall be an online graphical interface with various self-advocacy functions that can be selected by clients. This shall include, for example, the ability to report client rights violations, request a meeting with a service coordinator, attend online committee meetings (with up-to-date links), browse upcoming regional center events, watch video messages from the regional center, view profiles of regional center employees, and complete polls created by the board of directors, executive director, or client advisory committee.
—Phase 2: These following initiatives are to be completed within 2 years after adoption of this policy.—
Procedure Committee. Regional centers will establish this committee with regular client comment opportunities. This committee will create task checklists and decision assessments and submit them to appointed regional center staff for approval. Tasks include evaluating quality, determining client needs, and processing service requests. Service decisions shall be based on objective, publicly accountable, assessments, rather than the judgments of gatekeepers. We intend to take our duties as thoroughly and diligently as the airline industry does for their duties.
Problems Addressed:
—Phase 3: These following initiatives are to be completed within 3 years after adoption of this policy.—
Disabilities Defined. Regional centers shall create publicly available definitions for all eligible disabilities. This will help expose any prejudicial assumptions about disabilities that staff might have, such as stimming being a preference and not an autistic need. This continuing process will include feedback from people who share the disability in question and be written using the social model of disability.
Problems Addressed:
—Phase 4: These following initiatives are to be completed within 4 years after adoption of this policy.—
Panel of Peers. If a client claims their right to dignity (including rights in this policy) is violated and the regional center concludes it is not violated, the client has the right to appeal to a panel of their peers that can better have empathy for the person’s perspective and experiences. Should the panel conclude that there is a violation, the regional center is responsible for submitting a discipline plan for them to approve.
Problems Addressed: Unaccountability
Abolish Regional Centers 
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