Presentation by Aarne Rajalahti announcing the launch of the European Self-Directed Support Network.

1. The European Self-Directed
Support Network
Aarne Rajalahti
Development Manager
Service Foundation for People with Intellectual Disabilities
EASPD Project Workshop, Istanbul, 26.9.2013
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2. We talk about person-centredness but the service system is not person-centred
People and their lifes and
needs are different
Laws
Funding by
taxation
Local authorities trying to fit
people into extisting services
Person-centered planning
isn’t enough, if there are no
real choices or services are
always similar to everybody
Services
available
Money is being spent on
segregated services rather
that inclusion
 Can
they be
personcentered?
People don’t have real
choices or control over their
lives
Public tendering processes
have mixed the picture
even more. Bidding doesn’t
fit in housing and support
services of people with
disabilities but is a growing
reality
People with different lifes, needs and goals

3. “I sit in a day activity center and do
nothing except drink coffee. I am a
young man. Is this what my life will
always be?”
“My self-autonomy isn’t being respected
in a service home. I wan’t to move out”.
“I’d like to spend my time sometimes
with someone else than my mom or in a
group”
These are things that people with disabilities actually say:

4. Self-direction is a key to citizenship
”Citizenship model”, by Simon Duffy, The Centre for Welfare Reform

5. What is Self-Directed Support
•
•
•
Across Europe there are now different systems of funding and some different
experiments in self-directed support
However there are many differences between these systems and many different
words are used to describe these systems:
– personal budgets
– individual budgets
– individualised funding
– selfmanaged funding
– self-directed support
– service brokerage
– direct payments etc.
There are differences between countries. For example who can have a personal
budget, what can it be used for, how systems are funded, what kind of support
there is to self-direction.

6. What is Self-Directed Support
SDS is any system of funding that aims to enable people with disabilities to
achieve full and active citizenship
We currently believe that an effective system will have the following
qualities:
1. Rights - strong rights that give people proper entitlements
2. Control - the person, or someone close to them, can control the budget
3. Clarity - the systems, its rules and the budgets are clear
4. Flexibility - budgets can be used in many different ways
5. Ease of Use - it is easy to plan, manage budgets and control assistance
6. Learning - information, advice and opportunities for innovation are
available
7. Contribution - budgets can help people make a contribution to society
Self-directed support funding systems do NOT refer to means/money for
basic income (food, clothes, rent) which may be called salaries, pensions,
income security, benefits etc. Self-directed support (partly) replaces funding
that was given to services in the past.

7. Person-centred planning
One example of SDS
(Self) evaluation of
support needs
What do I want to achieve?
What do I want to keep?
What do I want to change?
Creating of a personal budget
-from people’s needs, services and support they are entitled to
-from things people want to change or achieve
Making of a support plan (with support if needed)
Analyzation of a support plan ( + final budget)
Living life = organizing and getting the support and services, what’s written in the support plan
Evaluation = Is the support right and adequate
Revising of a budget

8. Why is self-directed support
important
1. People with intellectual disabilities have the
right to be in control.
2. Services should be accountable to citizens with
intellectual disabilities.
3. People tend to make better decisions for themselves
than other people make for them
4. Quality increases with flexibility, innovation and
challenge.
(Slide by Simon Duffy, The Centre for Welfare Reform)

9. Ideas for The European SelfDirected Support Network
Mission
To help persons with disabilities across Europe
to achieve full citizenship by reforming systems
for funding assistance and meeting the human
rights of people with disabilities.

10. Ideas for The European SelfDirected Support Network
Objectives
1. To identify systems of self-directed support used in Europe
2. To identify and share good practice
3. To identify obstacles to good practice
4. To create a network of champions for self-directed support
across Europe (of interested organisations, people with
disabilities and families)
5. To build alliances with other groups who are using selfdirected support (not just people with disabilities)
6. To help improve European policy-making on self-directed
support

11. The first phase of the project
In the first phase of the project we aim to work with our partners to
gather information about the progress of Self-Directed Supports across
Europe and to establish connections with organizations in each
European country who wish to be part of the project.
Our objective is to gather as much information as possible in time for
the EASPD policy seminar on 4th December and to invite champions of
self-directed support to the event for further discussion.
Online survey here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1UfGyDRJUGQJYXcdVm0i_98fdw1XdeT37NoZVclbE5aM/viewform

12. Partnership
We need partners in all of the objectives.
We need to
•meet, share, learn
•make research, build strategies
•grow a network
•use social media and easy to access -tools
•organize events, lobby, publish papers
•find ways for service producers to help
•work together to promote people’s right to access full
citizenship

13. The European Self-Directed
Support Network
– want to join in?
Contacts:
Aarne Rajalahti
Development Manager
Service Foundation for
People with Intellectual Disabilities
aarne.rajalahti@kvps.fi
+358 40 517 4447
Dr Simon Duffy
Director ofThe Centre for Welfare Reform
simon@centreforwelfarereform.org
+44 7729 7729 41
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