WE BELIEVE IN…

• Equal access to programs, services, and employment
• Enforcement of civil rights
• Equal opportunities and responsibility
• All people are valued.

In 1973, three severely disabled young men in California, who lived in nursing homes or with their families, asked that they be provided with accessible housing and attendant care to attend the University of California. Their move founded the Center for Independent Living at Berkeley and began the independent living movement. One of them, Ed Roberts, who was a quadriplegic and used a respirator, later became the California Commissioner of Rehabilitation.

The movement started by these young men gained momentum with returning Vietnam veterans who expected to attend college, work, and live in their communities. Other people with disabilities began to see themselves as deserving full citizenship. In 1977, 50 of them sat in the Health, Education and Welfare offices in San Francisco to force implementation of the Section 504 regulations guaranteeing them equal access for federally funded programs.

Centers for Independent Living began receiving federal funds in 1979. Since then, independent living has snowballed, with over 400 centers nationwide operating a multitude of different programs from varied funding sources. But as it has grown, independent living has also been misunderstood or improperly defined. In some cases, even nursing homes and sheltered workshops, the very antithesis of independent living, represented themselves as “independent living centers.” It became necessary to define “independent living.”

Independent living on an individual level means the individual makes his or her life decision and controls daily life. While being able to physically care for oneself and living on one’s own may be elements of independent living for many people, independent living is not defined strictly in terms of physical self-sufficiency or living situation. The main element is that the disabled person (not family, friends, or professionals) exercise control and make choices. Independent living implies responsibility on the part of the disabled person to assume control of his or her life and to make choices and take actions resulting in desired changes.

Severely disabled people require support services such as attendant care, housing, transportation, etc., to enable them to live independently in the community rather than dependent on family or in nursing homes. In this context, independent living is seen as a service delivery system. Centers for Independent Living were established to identify, create, and improve these services and to promote access and attitudes in the community favorable to independent living. Centers for Independent Living are NOT residences where disabled people live. They are offices and meeting places providing services to disabled people living in the community, run by an organization controlled by people with disabilities and advocating for disability issues.

In 1981, the National Council on Independent Living (NCIL) was organized to represent the independent living movement. NCIL’s voting membership is made up of centers for independent living that meet its membership criteria. NCIL’s membership criteria specify that the center must be consumer controlled, offer core independent living services, serve more than one disability type, and be a not-for profit corporation governed by a board of directors. The center must not be, or spend a majority of its budget on, a housing project for disabled residents. Freedom Resource Center is a qualified member of the National Council on Independent Living.

Consumer Control implies that people with disabilities should control programs serving them and organizations representing them. The NCIL membership criteria for centers for independent living require that 51% or more of the center’s board of directors must be people with disabilities. The NCIL definition of consumer includes on the persons with disabilities themselves, not their spouse, family members, advocates, or rehabilitation professionals. NCIL also recommends that the majority of center staff be persons with disabilities, and that the executive director be a person with a disability.

Many Centers for Independent Living provide direct services in the areas of attendant care, housing, and transportation because these services do not exist at all in the community or are handled in a way that fails to serve people with disabilities (for example, inaccessible public transportation). But the ideal role of an centers for independent living is service delivery is still to demonstrate the need to support services to the community; advocating for legislation, funding, and policies to establish the needed services; and work with existing agencies to improve their services to people with disabilities. Toward this goal; the four core independent living services as defined by NCIL are:

1. Information and referral
2. Advocacy
3. Peer counseling (mentoring)
4. Independent living skills training.

As a social movement, independent living supports the disability rights movement and promotes the integration of people with disabilities into the community. Independent living advocates are politically active in issues affecting the civil rights and the social, economic, and educational opportunities of people of all disabilities. Independent living advocates also promote public education related to disability, a positive public image of persons with disabilities through correct terminology and media portrayal, and involvement of persons with disabilities in local, state, and federal government. In most cases, the independent living movement does not support legislation or policies benefiting only one disability type. Independent living as a social movement promotes equal access for disabled consumers to existing public services, housing, and transportation, and the inclusion of persons with disabilities in community social and recreational activities. With few exceptions, independent living advocates do not support the creation of separate services and activities segregating disabled members from the rest of the community.

Links to Center for Independent Living Resources