My Life My Way: The Power of Quality in Your Life

May 20, 2024 | by sau1admin

All month long we have been focusing on what we here at SAU1 like to call My Life, My Way. In case you missed it, so far we have covered advocacy, communication, and choice and control. For the blog this week, we want to focus on something that goes along with all of these topics. This week we're going to talk about quality and what exactly that means to self advocates.

For self advocates, quality means “I want my life, my way. I and the people around me make sure the services I choose are proved to be of high quality.” For people that experience disability, quality supports are important to living their life the way they want. Some of the supports that may be needed include:

• personal care,
• physical, occupational, speech, or other therapies,
• life skills supports,
• service coordination,
• medication supports,
• counseling,
• and much more.

For self advocates to be successful living the life they want, it is important that these supports give people the freedom to do what they want, when they want. Working together, self advocates and allies can make sure these supports are of the highest quality. It is also important that if they're not, self advocates know who to speak up to so they get the support they need, the way they need it.

There are several different ways to do this. You can speak with your support system about issues, you can speak to a supports coordinator to change supports as needed. You can also speak up to the agencies providing these supports such as the Office of Developmental Programs (ODP). Every month SAU1 holds what we call a Power Talk so you can get your questions answered directly by people that work for ODP, in order to make sure that you are getting the quality supports you need and deserve. You don't have to do it alone. You can attend one of our free, in person, self advocacy events to learn how to speak up for yourself better. You can view the monthly calendar on our website. We can't wait to teach you how to speak up for the quality of life that you want!