Solutions For Independence: Working Everyday To Form an Inclusive Community For All
You never know when your life is going to change. One minute you’re watching a movie with your friends, and the next, you get a zoom call informing you that you finally got your first paying job at your local center for independent Living, Solutions for Independence.
Centers for Independent Living like Solutions have their roots back in the early days of the 1970s. Ed Roberts, called the Father of Independent Living, led a group of students at the University of California at Berkley to form an organization designed to help people with disabilities live in the community of their choice, rather than a state-run facility which tended to have inadequate living conditions. Eventually, the model from Berkley spread across the country. Today there are over 400 centers in the United States, including right here in Winston-Salem.
Congress established the Centers for Independent Living (CILS) framework in 1978 when the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was amended. CILS are local organizations that are consumer responsive and operated by people with disabilities. CILS are genuinely different from other disability organizations, as we are run and operated by the majority of people with disabilities. All our services promote disability rights and the independent living philosophy; this is a point of pride for our organization. In addition to being consumer-run, CILS provides consumer-directed services, which means that the consumer controls the services they receive. We believe that consumers are the best expert in their own lives and should be given the right to make choices about their lives, education, and employment. Solutions For Independence is a federally recognized Center for Independent Living that uses Title VII funding to provide services to Davidson, Davie, Forsyth, Stokes, Surry, and Yadkin Counties. By design, CILS are consumer-controlled,
My new job is always fascinating. I never know precisely what I’ll be doing on a given day, but Solutions offers five core
Solutions For Independence services empower individuals with disabilities to reach their highest level of independence in daily living activities. These include self-care, employment, education, relationships, transportation, and communication. This is achieved by providing five core services: 1. Advocacy 2. Information & Referral 3. Peer Support 4. Independent Living Skills Training 5. Transitioning either in school or out of institutions like nursing homes. In addition to our daily work, we aim to be a foundation of disability pride in our community. At the center, we just hosted a celebration of the 31st anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA is the main civil rights law for people with disabilities. It fitted for a center like ours to celebrate disability rights because the Center for Independent Living and its staff play a major role in getting the rights in the first place. For example, in 1977, a woman named Judy Heumann led a peaceful sit-in at the Federal Building in San Francisco to force the federal government to enforce Section 504 of the Vocation Rehabilitation Act of 1973. It was, and still is, the longest sit-in in United States history and eventually led to more civil rights present in the ADA. As a sign of how important it is, it’s now documented on Netflix in a movie called “Crip Camp.”
I aim to follow the example of Heumann and Roberts in my work at Solutions for Independence. If you need any help or want more information, please visit our website, https://sicilnc.org/, or call 336-767-7060
That’s how I roll.