THE INDEPENDENT LIVING PHILOSOPHY

Your Key to Accessibility

Serving people with disabilities of all ages and their significant others.

Independent living is living like everyone else, having opportunities to make decisions that affect one's life, being able to pursue activities of one's own choosing - limited only in the same way non-disabled people are. It is self-determination for people with disabilities ; It is having the right and opportunity to pursue a course of action. It is having the freedom to fail, and to learn from one's failures, just as non-disabled people do. Independent living is the ability of people with disabilities to make their own choices and decisions in and about their lives.

For individuals who have certain mental impairments (for example, those with moderate to severe and severe & profound mental retardation) which may affect their abilities to make complicated decisions or pursue complex activities Independent living is defined as having every opportunity to be as self-sufficient as possible.

Living on one's own, being employed in a job fitting one's capabilities and interests, and having an active social life are not independent living, but rather aspects of independent living.

 Most Americans take for granted opportunities they have regarding living arrangements, employment situations, means of transportation, social and recreational activities and other aspects of everyday life. For many Americans with disabilities however, barriers in their communities take away or severely limit their choices. These barriers may be obvious such as: lack of ramped entrances for people who use wheelchairs, lack of interpreters or captioning for those with hearing impairments, lack of Braille or taped copies of printed material for people who have visual impairments. Other barriers frequently less obvious can be even more limiting to efforts on the part of people with disabilities to live independently, and they result from people's misunderstandings and prejudices about disability. These barriers result in low expectations about what people with disabilities can achieve.

People with disabilities not only have to deal with the effects of their disabling conditions, but they also have to deal with both kinds of barriers. Otherwise, they are likely to limited to a life of dependency and low personal satisfaction.

This need not occur. Millions of people all over America who experience disabilities have established lives of independence. They fulfill all kinds of roles in their communities, from employers, employees, marriage partners, students, athletes, politicians, to taxpayers - an unlimited list. In most cases the barriers facing them haven't been removed, but these individuals have been successful in overcoming or at least dealing with them.

    Millions of people with disabilities rate independent living higher than a life of dependency, narrow opportunities, and unfulfilled expectations.

Fortunately people with disabilities don't have to do it all on their own. Independent Living Centers, known by the acronym ILCs or CILs, are designed specifically to assist people with disabilities in achieving and maintaining independent lifestyles.

Independent Living Centers are extraordinary in that they are run by people with disabilities who themselves have been successful in establishing independent lives. These people have both the training and personal experience to know exactly what is needed to live independently. These people have a deep commitment to assisting other disabled people in becoming more independent.  

Centers offer a wide variety of services, Four are essential to the identity and purpose of ILCs and to the efforts of people with disabilities to live independently.

  Information and Referral

Centers maintain comprehensive information files on the availability in their service areas of accessible housing, transportation, employment opportunities, and rosters of people available to serve as personal assistants, interpreters for the deaf, and readers as well as for many other services.  

  Independent Living Skills Training

Centers provide training courses to help people with disabilities gain skills that would enable them to live more independently. These courses may include:

    Using the public transit system

    Personal budgeting skills

      Dealing with the insensitive and discriminatory behavior of others and self-control.

Our IL services include:

Employment Links:

  Cross Disability Peer Counseling and Support

This service is consumers working with other people with disabilities who are living independently in the community.

Here at the BHCIL peer counseling and support is usually provided in mentor / mentoree fashion or role modeling situations. This type of support is called the peer support delivery model; In the majority of ILCs this form of service delivery is the principal manner in which support is provided. The peer support delivery model is one of the cornerstone ways the independent living philosophy is applied to the delivery of services. This is because the idea behind independent living is that the ones who know best what services people with disabilities need in order to live independently are disabled people themselves. People with disabilities who have been successful in establishing independent lives have both the training and personal experience to know exactly what is needed to live independently and be role models in assisting other disabled people in becoming more independent.

Other times support is provided in the more traditional support group setting see NAMI: Peer to Peer Support Group                       

The objective is to explore options and solve problems that sometimes occur for people with disabilities -- For example, making adjustments to a newly acquired disability, adjustment to new living arrangements, or using community services more effectively. 

  Advocacy

Centers provide two kinds of advocacy: Consumer advocacy involves CIL staff working with individuals to obtain necessary support services from other agencies in the community. CIL staff also advocate for people with disabilities involved in formal meetings helping the consumer get his / her wants or needs across to other meeting participants.  BHCIL also encourages its consumers to be self-advocates by providing courses in self-advocacy skills and Self-Determination

    Community advocacy involves CIL staff, board members, and volunteers initiating activities to make changes in the community that make it easier for all people with disabilities to live more independently. Examples at the BHCIL include: Advocating for the installation of curb cuts downtown and the installation of an electronic door by the Black Hawk County Transit Coalition   

Auxiliary Services

Other services provided by a CIL are  generally dependent on the specific needs of the consumers and members served. These services usually fill a void left by lack of services within a given service area.

Auxiliary services at the BHCIL include: 

  Community education, outreach, and information services

  Braille Translation

  Prime Time Pass

  In-House Spanish Translation / Interpretation

  CIL Newsletter

 Upon request, we also provide ADA technical assistance.

There are several different types of organizations that serve people with disabilities. These include: special needs - special education departments within schools or specialized disability schools, state vocational rehabilitation agencies, group homes, rehabilitation hospitals, sheltered workshops, nursing homes, senior centers and home health care agencies. etc. While these organizations provide valuable and needed services and are important links in the network of services that help people with disabilities.  

The principal difference between these organizations and Independent Living Centers is that ILCs lack the paternalistic or pity attitudes toward people with disabilities or the institutional bias toward using the services outlined above found in many other service organizations geared toward people with disabilities.  ILCs have a can do with a stretch and supports attitude that emphasizes the independent living of people with disabilities.

What makes CILs different and distinguishes them from other organizations is that they have substantial involvement of people with disabilities making policy decisions and delivering services. This is because the idea behind independent living is that the ones who know best what services people with disabilities need in order to live independently are disabled people themselves.

In the late 1960s and early '70s people with disabilities around the country began to take active roles on local, state, and national levels in shaping decisions on issues affecting their lives. A major part of these activities involved formation of community based groups of people with different types of disabilities who worked together to do away with barriers and gaps in service delivery.

To address barriers, action plans were developed to educate communities and influence policy makers at all levels, change regulations, and introduce barrier-removing legislation. To address gaps in services, a new method of service delivery was conceived, one which has people with disabilities determining the kinds of services essential to living independently, has people with disabilities directing the delivery of these services, and people with disabilities actually providing these services.

The earliest ILC was founded in 1972 in Berkeley,Ca. followed in the same year by centers in Boston and Houston. In 1979, following effective advocacy by people with disabilities and their supporters all over the country, federal legislation was passed that provided funding to establish ILCs (Title VII of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973). Today there are ILCs virtually in every state and U.S. territory. There is even a CyberCIL on the World Wide Web. The State of Iowa has seven ILCs serving its disabled citizens and their families.

ILCs can be easily distinguished from other service organizations by the extent of involvement of people with disabilities. Centers have a majority of people with disabilities on their governing boards. They hire qualified individuals with disabilities to fill management and service delivery positions.

ILCs typically serve all disability groups including people with physical and mobility impairments, people with mental retardation, the blind and visually impaired, the deaf and hearing impaired, people with mental illness and emotional issues, and people with traumatic brain injuries as well as other disability groups.

The extent to which an ILC serves a given disability group will vary from one ILC to another and depend very much on the extent to which representatives of a given disability group have chosen to be involved with the ILC, the availability and quality of services provided by other community service organizations, and the financial resources of the ILCs. 

People running ILCs believe very strongly that, prior to initiating services to a disability group efforts be made to recruit representatives of that group to serve in board, staff, and advisory roles. In this way people who are to benefit from the services provided have input in designing and delivering those services.

Changes that make life more satisfying don't occur overnight. For people who are willing to work toward greater independence ILCs can help put the pieces together.

A list of the six other ILCs in Iowa aside from the BHCIL can be found in the top section of the last page of this site called Links to Other Useful Sites.

Each ILC strives to serve the needs people with disabilities in their service area and the unique needs of its members and consumers. If you have a need call the ILC in your area, and ask for help. ILCs are continuously seeking additional monetary funds, volunteers, paid staff, board members and members at large.

Adapted and Paraphrased from © Independent Living Philosophy, You Can Work Participant Manual.

©You Can Work Participant Manual is a work of the BHCIL.