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On Being an Unconserved Adult California Regional Center Consumer
It can easily turn into a full-time job.
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Once upon a time, the default course of action where I live primarily involved locking away our most obviously disabled in institutions early in life and trying to forget they ever existed. At some point, around the 1960s, a group of parents whose offspring belonged to this incredibly disenfranchised demographic managed to convince enough people with enough power to try and at least somewhat rectify the situation. The result was the Lanterman Act, which begot the 21 private non-profit Regional Centers scattered throughout the state of California. Each Regional Center provides a smorgasbord of services designed to assist developmentally disabled people in remaining within their communities and living their best lives. In order to qualify for services, one must have qualifying and lifelong condition, such as, but not limited to autism, epilepsy, or cerebral palsy, be able to prove that the qualifying condition existed before the prospective consumer turned 18, and exhibit “significant functional limitations” in at least two of five “areas of major life activity” (self-care, receptive and expressive language, learning, mobility, and self-direction), as determined by the…
