CHAPTER 4: RESPONDING TO THE NEEDS OF PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES   http://www.dhhs.state.nc.us/mhplan/stateplanpart4.pdf

This chapter looks at community services and the capacity to provide those services. The state plan calls for the adoption of best practice and emerging best practice models based on the following philosophical and theoretical frameworks. These include:

• Consumer Driven: promote systems of support and/or services that are controlled by people with disabilities. These include psychosocial clubhouse, drop-in centers, and peer support.
• Consumer Friendly: management and provider systems operate in a manner that promotes a user friendly, responsive customer service orientation in all aspects of support, services, care, and treatment.
• Self-determination: is based on five principles: 1) Freedom to live a meaningful life in the community, 2) Authority over how a limit amount of dollars are spent for needed service/supports, 3) Supports to organize and obtain resources in ways that are life enhancing and meaningful, 4) Responsibility for the wise use of public dollars, 5) Confirmation of the important leadership that self advocates must hold in a newly designed system
• Person-centered planning: individual with the disability assumes an informed and in-command role for life planning. This process results in an individual support plan (ISP)
• Cultural Competence: Acknowledge and respect diversity of ethnic, cultural, and religious groupings. Cultural norms are recognized, accommodated, and respected.
• Recovery: recognizes and accepts chronic disability as part of the person’s life-long experience. Presumes that individuals can learn to effectively manage their symptoms, maximize their level of functioning and go on to attain a life of meaning, productivity, and satisfaction.
• Systems of support: also known as system of care it is intended to promote stability and health development of life domains within the context of a natural community environment. The individual and people in close relationships form the core of the system of support and peers and professionals build from that core. Other community resources can include the schools, public health, social services systems, faith-based organizations, and advocates.

The state plan does not identify a "benefit package" of services for various target populations. Rather, it states that "service and support selections for an individual’s support plan (ISP) may be drawn from any or all of an array of options using the models of practice adopted by the State Plan and developed by the local service systems." The ISP should typically address the following areas:

• Housing/Residential
• Transportation
• Treatment, symptom management, therapies
• Work, school, activity, leisure
• Wrap-around services
• Crisis, emergency, including core emergency services