About Self-Determination

On June 7, 2018, the Department of Developmental Services (DDS) announced that the application for federal funding, or “Waiver”, of the Self-Determination Program (SDP) was approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). This approval is a critical milestone toward providing people who receive regional center services, and their families, an alternative way to coordinate their services.  The Self-Determination Program is intended to offer people more freedom and control over how their services are provided and more freedom and control in who supports them.

Self-Determination began in California almost twenty years ago as a small pilot project at five regional centers. Then in October of 2013, Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr., signed Senate Bill 468, into law. This law established a statewide Self-Determination Program that adheres to the following principles to ensure those who participate have:

• Freedom – to exercise the same rights as all citizens; to establish, with freely chosen supporters, family and friends, where they want to live, with whom they want to live, how their time will be occupied, and who supports them;
• Authority – to control a budget in order to purchase services and supports of their choosing;
• Support – including the ability to arrange resources and personnel, this will allow flexibility to live in the community of their choice;
• Responsibility – which includes the ability to take responsibility for making decisions in their own lives and accept a valued role in their community, and
• Confirmation – in making decisions in their own lives by designing and operating the system that they rely on.