I am a Person Supporting People with Disabilities

Here you can find resources and information to help you get support as a caregiver or family member of someone living with a disability. You can also find information on getting involved with advocating for people with disabilities as well.

As people with disabilities become adults, the role of parents evolves, even as they continue to provide support. Through materials and activities of the independent living movement in Vermont, their sons or daughters can meet role models and gain skills in making important decisions about their own lives. Parents can shift their own role into supporting those decisions and helping making them a practical reality.

Parents of adults and their sons and daughters can learn how to navigate resources and systems for long-term care in Vermont. They can find opportunities for advocacy to strengthen supports for basic needs like housing, transportation, and employment. This includes making sure that their sons and daughters have and exercise their right to vote and be full participants in their community.

The Vermont SILC continues to advocate to reestablish Peer Navigators in Vermont. This was a program that provided a savvy, experienced family member or peer in each of 12 regions of Vermont to help families get what they needed, as they identified their own need. They quickly built trust with families. In the past they were particularly successful at supporting parents with disabilities to be able to keep custody of their children. They worked with regional Field Directors of the VT Agency of Human Services to increase flexibility to get what each individual family needed. When the grant for this highly successful program ended, budgets were tight, and this popular program was not sustained. Nevertheless, the success of the Peer Navigators has not been forgotten, and reestablishment continues to be a goal.