This page is for people living with disability, their families and supporters.

It has information about Supported Decision Making.

What is Supported Decision Making?

Supported Decision Making (SDM) refers to approaches that assist a person living with disability to make their own choices and decisions.  Typically, they are designed for people whose cognitive impairment may make the person more vulnerable when making decisions. SDM is a way to help make sure the person remains at the centre of their own decisions.

SDM has emerged because the alternative has been that someone else has made the person’s decisions for them.  This can happen informally, where the person’s choices and decisions are made by another member of the person’s family or someone else the person knows. It can also happen formally, where someone is legally appointed to be a guardian.  This means it is that person’s job to make decisions for the other person.  This is called substitute decision making.

The problem with substitute decision making is that someone else now has the legal right to make the person’s decisions for them.  This can be a problem if the other person has different ideas about what is good for the person.

However, SDM helps preserve the person’s legal right to make their own decisions.  This is important because the UN Convention, the National Disability Strategy and the NDIS all carry values that uphold the importance of people making their own decisions.

Peer Networks and SDM

Peer networks often help people think about their choices and decisions.  So SDM could be a good topic to discuss at a peer network meeting.  This could include:

  • Inviting a guest speaker who knows about SDM.  This could include someone who has SDM to help them, or someone who is a supporter helping someone else make their own decisions
  • The group talking about why it is important for a person to make their own decisions and have choices, the decisions each group member has been proud of, and why some decisions might be harder than others, and what can help.

Useful Resources about SDM

Why SDM is important

The Disability Advocacy Network Australia (DANA) has a good summary of Supported Decision Making, and links it to the NDIS and to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The site also lists the various guardianship systems around Australia.

Places where SDM has been tried

In South Australia, the Office of the Public Advocate (OPA) worked with community organisation JFA Purple Orange and philanthropic fund the Julia Farr MS McLeod Benevolent Fund to design and run an SDM pilot.  The OPA  website includes the evaluation report, definitions, a practice manual, and presentations made to conferences.

SDM is also being tried in Victoria, in a partnership between the Office of the Public Advocate and local advocacy agency VALID.  The pilot focuses on people who are using the NDIS.

Guides to SDM

 

Help us

If you know of other good resources on this subject, let us know and we’ll put a link on this page. Also, if you read anything that is out-of-date, or a link doesn’t work, tell us and we’ll get it fixed. Contact Jackie Hayes (08) 8373 8333 or email jackieh@purpleorange.org.au