A return to Heurism and/or Wereism

This is the one hundredth post on this website, a cause for celebration no doubt and maybe kindness or neutrality.  To think without cynicism is to hear the beating of angels' wings through a bird-splashed windshield, but I have had some thoughts recently about how the "Support broker" position in self-directed services might develop differently than it is conceived so far.

As presented, the position is largely designed to provide for two functions, that of a person-centered plan-writing guru and secondly as a clearinghouse for referrals to appropriate resources available for SDS client/managers to fulfill their plans.  Without disparaging either function, I wonder if there aren't roles of greater value into which the service broker role might grow, much as ILS agencies have changed wherever permitted from the role initially conceived to a more valuable one unforeseen but unprevented by regulations.

While person-centered planning as a brand-name set of operations can be a wonderful contribution to the service and support people receive, some of that value may be diluted by the self-directed aspect of self-directed services.  What's more, as much as I and ¡Arriba! have been and continue to be boosters of Essential Lifestyle Planning and person-centered thinking, we have been boosters with a sneaking suspicion that the basic ideas are more important to advocates on average than to the people the thinking is meant to be centered on, paradoxically.  It is almost certain also that "person-centeredness" has a much wider dominion as an amorphous catchphrase translating, approximately, to the English "Holy" or "Pious" than it does as a practice.

The clearinghouse function will, for many SDS clients be sufficient and magical.  If a client's purpose is to recreate at lower cost and with greater control the traditional one:one services they've received, and that client lives in an environment with a high density of people with disabilities, then their purpose is a grand one. For these SDS clients, an advisor who makes a business out of knowing who is providing what supports at what costs and how their clients seem to enjoy the service can be very valuable.  In more rural or less-served communities, in languages spoken by very few, and to people whose purpose with SDS is to more creative than, say, replacing supported employment with a look-alike SDS equivalent, it is not clear what breadth of knowledge would be necessary to make a service broker a useful expert, or how they could possible charge enough for such expertise.

So, with the wisdom of a service broker whose caseload is expected to double this month from one to two clients, I will speculate out loud that a primary function of the service broker will be as a management consultant to SDS clients.   It has been such a long fight to acknowledge that people with disabilities, themselves, have the best ideas for what they value and need, that we might have grown reluctant to acknowledge that other capacities, such as designing and managing programs that work are learned skills.  There is no reason to assume that any given SDS client will not be a brilliant manager and reliable planner, but there is also no reason to expect her neighbor to be.  

If you look from agency to agency- ok we've established this doesn't happen- if someone would look from agency to agency with an eye to quality and efficiency there might be a wide variation.  For SDS clients who have to depend largely on themselves for their success, that kind of variation endangers the success of the SDS program and the wellbeing of clients who don't get it right away.  Regional center staff, generally, will not be able to provide advice on program management any more reliably than clients will intuit that knowledge instinctively.  However, a service broker with experience in program management can provide real value toward greater success and security of individual SDS programs.  For some subset of SDS clients, management consulting will be the most valuable function of a service broker.

What does this theory require of us now?  Probably nothing.  While the SDS guidelines will probably over-regulate who can be a service-broker, the basic function of management consultant is not forbidden to service brokers.  It is always worth remembering with new things that unexpected results might be salutary.  I think the only policy suggestion I have to offer for now, is that when the time comes to review and improve whatever regulations are about to be promulgated, that some thought be given to a more nuanced method of preventing conflicts of interest if to do so will improve the quality of service brokers.