Self-direction | WA’s Individualised Services

Self-Direction, like Self Determination, is about US, as complex and beautiful human beings who get to be our own persons, with our own authority and our own ways of being, loving, communicating, working, playing, and deciding what is right for us.

Self Direction can be defined as . . . being free, in action and judgement, from external control and constraint . . . excluding those constraints that apply to us all under the law.

Self direction is NOT about ‘supports’ or ‘funding’.

It is NOT about a system.

We value being able to self determine what is most important to us and to have some control of what we want our lives to look like and the decisions we make.

We value having the authority to communicate with people in words and actions – ‘This is what I want and need’.

Sometimes, we ALL may some need help to do this.

Self Direction IS for everyone. There is no ‘except who’.

We could choose to notice differently; who people are, the ways they ARE making decisions and ‘self directing’ their lives. This may be in ways we may not currently recognise.

We could dump our ‘we know what’s best’ framework.

We could support people’s authority and the specific ways they self-direct their lives.

There’s the challenge.

Self Direction is about:

really listening to people
hearing what is most important to them
hearing what would make a difference to their lives
standing by them
taking action with them, in whatever way they want or need.

“If you’re going to work with me, you have to listen to me. And you can’t just listen with your ears, or it will go to your head too fast. You have to listen with your whole body. If you listen slow, with your whole self, some of what I say will enter your heart.”
Christine Mayer