Tips to Encourage More Independence for People with Disabilities
- Allow choice about friends and lifestyle
- Consider options for learning, employment or volunteering
- Encourage interactions with others
- Encourage your community to embrace diversity
- Enrol to vote…encourage to have a say
- Establish a trusted support network
- Join community activities & groups
- Learn from each other and adapt
- Live a healthy lifestyle
- Provide decision-making power
- Provide training to improve the required skills for independence
- Respect and recognise multiple identities
- Search for meaning, rather than judging behaviour
- Seek to support, not control
- Show positivity
- Start slow with daily life decisions
- Start with daily living skills
- Talk about relationships & sex
- Use technology to develop skills
Promoting independence for people with a disability can be a hard and confronting journey, because your instincts encourage you to protect and nurture, however, if you can embrace the uncertainty and commit to supporting your loved one on this adventure, the end result will be a positive and life-changing one for both of you.
Key takeaways for promoting independence in adults with a disability:
- Empower your loved one to make decisions and actively involve them in decision-making
- Trust others and build a support network in the community
- Be positive and celebrate small improvements
- Make learning a daily habit for both of you
- Focus on the 1% changes, and don’t get caught up trying to make a “big” difference, it doesn’t have to happen overnight.
- Get help! There are some fantastic disability support service providers that you can use your NDIS budget to engage