Services for Persons with Disabilties Program: An Overview

I would like to start with an introduction to the Department of Community Services's new Services for Persons with Disabilities Program.

The relevant Department of Community Services page reads as follows:

Services for Persons with Disabilities is a voluntary program that provides residential and day programs for adults with intellectual/physical disabilities or long term mental illness. Residential services include a continuum of options ranging from support to families caring for a family member with a disability in their own home, to full 24 hour residential support. The goal is to create a range of programs that can support people at various stages of their development and independence.

Overview of the Program
The first thing to note is that contrary to the above, the Services for Persons with Disabilities (SPD) Program, or at least a portion of it, is applicable to children with intellectual and physical disabilities. We are told that the SPD program is a new umbrella program which covers a variety of residential options. But although its true that it does encompass a few new policies and thus, offers a few new options, its important to realize that, at least at this point, the umbrella also covers a lot of old program options which appear to have simply been given a new updated handle. But we will delve deeper into that situation in future posts. For now, I'm just going to lay out, in a bare bones fashion, the "options" provided under the current SPD Program.

READ MORE