Supported decision-making (SDM) is emerging as an approach to provide decision making assistance for adults with disabilities and other functional challenges without imposing any long-term legal limitations on their rights or personal liberties. This promising practice has the potential to enhance, advance, and transform the current approach to daily support for people if it is successfully integrated into routine practices. In simplest terms, we are talking about supporting children and adults with disabilities to experience the natural process of maturation—learning how to make better decisions over time through real-life experiences. Increasing opportunities for people with disabilities to participate in decision making follows the typical process of growth and development and has the potential to result in reduced reliance on more restrictive approaches for support over time.
The ideas behind supported decision-making are not entirely new. They build on a long tradition of research and implementation around person-centered planning and the...