I would like to demonstrate that, with the requisite funds and personal assistance, physical dependency can be overcome and independence achieved. In the late 1960s, people with a variety of disabilities got together in America to form a civil rights movement in order to protest against clinical living conditions in residential care, and in response to other disadvantages encountered in the education system, at work and in practically every sphere of their lives. The founders of this movement were people who needed a relatively high level of personal assistance in everyday life.
More power implies having adequate funds, defining social situations and setting the agenda.
Funds should therefore he provided directly to the individual concerned, for example in the form of a personal budget as is the case in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. This is a new approach to disability. It is also a philosophy of disabled people's needs. In this it differs fundamentally from the traditional philosophy of rehabilitation, which is therapy-orientated and essentially geared to the adjustment of disabled people to existing working and living structure. Every democratic society guarantees the individual the right to dignity and self-determination.