Developing independence

The transition from living a life as others want (dependence) to living it as the adolescent wants to live it (independence) is extraordinarily difficult for most teen-agers and their families. The difficulty is compounded in the case of adolescents with disabilities. They are often denied access to the same opportunities of life that are accessible to the nondisabled. They face special problems in augmenting their inherent capacities so that they can take fuller advantage of the accommodations that society makes in an effort to grant them access. In particular, they need training designed to increase their capacities to make, communicate, implement, and evaluate their own life-choices. The recommendations made in this paper are grounded in the long-standing tradition of parens patriae and enlightened paternalism; they seek to be deliberately and cautiously careful about the lives of adolescents with disabilities and their families. We based them on the recent tradition of anti-institutionalism and they are also consistent with some of the major policy directions of the past 15-20 years. These include: normalization, integration, and least-restrictive alternatives; the unity and integrity of the family; the importance of opportunities for self-advocacy; the role of consumer consent and choice in consumer-professional relationships; the need for individualized services; the importance of the developmental model as a basis for service delivery; the value of economic productivity of people with disabilities; and the rights of habilitation, amelioration, and prevention.