In the context of persons with disabilities who are
involved in employment related services for the purpose of enhancing employment
opportunities, “informed choice” is the carefully considered and freely
determined decisions made by participants about program options,
employment/career/entrepenurial objectives and goals, services/products needed,
and where (from whom) those services/projects will be obtained, etc.
It is the exercise to the maximum extent of each individual’s potential
of control over one’s own future employment opportunity.
It is, belatedly, the recognition within the “rehabilitation” field
that persons with disabilities (like the rest of humanity) usually can make
better decisions about their own future than others can do for them, and that
there is independent value, in accord with the essence of being human, in making
decisions for one’s self.
As an issue “informed choice” does not rise to
prominence in a vacuum; rather its current intensity is ignited especially by
those who have “gone to the mountain top” and looked over at “the promised
land.” It is an issue precisely
because 1) its essential humanity is increasingly clear to many persons with
disabilities, 2) as is also increasingly clear it is not being implemented in
sufficient degree through the predominant federal/state systems.
It is reasonable that any major federal/state program
designed to achieve a purpose require, more than “choice” which is random,
uninformed, or manipulated for some other purpose.
And it is reasonable that some process be in place by which limited
resources – all circumstances involve limited resources – are allocated to
substantially maximize intended program results.
Thus, in this context, “choice” becomes more complete by the reality
of processes which “inform” it, and by structures which involve persons who
the program is intended to benefit in decisions to allocate limited resources.
People making their own decisions in their own interest, (and sometimes in the interest of others) is as radical as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. “Choice” reflects an understanding of the true nature of man and community; history reveals that programs or nations which patronize or dominate or treat persons as less than fully human always have trouble in the long run. Thus, “informed choice” is a serious and important challenge to the present structures of “rehabilitation.”