"A tragedy to take individual facilitation away" by Carmen Sutherland

I believe independent facilitation makes both budgetary and humanitarian sense.

I have many friends with loved ones who are involved in individual facilitation or are involved in it themselves. I also have many co-workers who are independent facilitators.

Through hearing about the experiences of all of these people, I have come to appreciate many things about independent facilitation. For one thing, I love that independent facilitators see the people that they work with as whole, distinct individuals.

People who work in independent facilitation are not concerned with fitting their focus people into a system, they want to help them improve their individual life, according to their, and/or their loved ones specifications. This inherently means that people with disabilities have choices about the trajectory of their lives. As a person with a disability myself, I know how dehumanizing it can feel when choices are taken away.

I also know that many times the reason this happens is that parents are afraid that their loved ones with disabilities will make the wrong choices. People who work in independent facilitation are wonderful at balancing the concerns of the parents with the dreams and goals of the focus people.

​I cannot stress enough how the people I know who work in independent facilitation are kind, compassionate, creative, determined individuals who take their work incredibly seriously. It would be a tragedy to take individual facilitation away from people with disabilities and their families.