The Burton Blatt Institute, a Syracuse University-based organization devoted to helping those with disabilities advance in society, recently received a $2.5 million grant for a new five-year project.

The project, titled “Understanding and Increasing Supported Decision-Making’s Positive Impact on Community Living and Participation Outcomes,” aims to enhance quality of life outcomes for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities by improving the way they live in communities and participate in daily life, according to an SU News release.

The project is based on historical evidence that, according to the release, people with intellectual and developmental disabilities have been personally affected by others’ low expectations about their decision-making capabilities. These low expectations of people with disabilities in “substituted decision-making frameworks,” such as guardianship, often diminish their self-determination and lead to devalued life outcomes, such as less community integration, according to the release.

“This exciting project will provide new knowledge about the ways that individual decision making positively impacts life outcomes,” said BBI Chairman and University Professor Peter Blanck in the release.

The project will involve an experimental model to examine whether training individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities and those close to them to use a specific, supported decision-making approach actually has a positive impact on their life satisfaction, integration in community living and daily life outcomes, according to the release.

The findings of the project will be used to identify policy and practices to enhance self-determination and community living for a wide span of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, including youth in transition, working-age adults and the aging population, BBI Director of Research Meera Adya said in the release.

The project is in collaboration with the University of Kansas and the Quality Trust for Individuals with Disabilities and other national disability organizations, according to the release, and the project will be conducted in cooperation with the District of Columbia Department on Disability Services. BBI and the D.C. Department on Disability Services are also partners on the Administration for Community Living’s (ACL) National Resource Center for Supported Decision Making.

The grant for the project was funded by an institute that is a subset of the ACL, which itself is a subset of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, according to the release. The institute is called the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research.

Published on October 26, 2015 at 8:39 pm

Contact Alexa: atorrens@syr.edu