Supported decision making
Supported Decision Making (SDM) is an alternative to guardianship that helps people with disabilities without limiting their rights. Learn how it works, what’s good and bad about SDM, and how to create, change, or end an SDM agreement.
Contents
1. Avoid guardianship
Family members and other caregivers may seek a guardian for someone with disabilities. But guardianship has many downsides:
- Once a guardianship is in place, it’s hard to remove.
- Guardianship can have negative consequences for people with disabilities and their families and caregivers.
- Guardianships often wrongly assume people with disabilities can’t make decisions for themselves.
Before asking for guardianship, investigate the alternatives. Try to use an alternative to guardianship if you can.
SDM is one such alternative. A Supportive Decision Making Agreement lets people with disabilities choose supporters to make decisions and exercise their legal rights. With an SDM agreement, the person chooses a trusted friend, relative and/or other (a supporter) to help them understand and make decisions, and to communicate decisions to, for example, doctors and the bank.
People who use SDM don’t need someone to make decisions for them. They just need help working through the decision-making process to make decisions for themselves.