By hiring people with disabilities, centers demonstrate an understanding of the need for consumer trust and acceptance and the importance of staff credibility. A unique and critically valuable feature of independent living center staffing is an emphasis on hiring persons with disabilities to provide consumer-defined services to their peers. It is also important to recruit and hire people with disabilities in support staff and clerical positions. This demonstrates the center s commitment to consumer representation. Finally, another means of broadening consumer control within a center is to recruit and involve people with disabilities in volunteer positions.
Volunteers can perform countless functions within a center.
While there is rich diversity in service delivery methods in centers across the country, the over-riding commonality and central characteristic of the independent living service delivery model is consumer control over the design and direction of services. Consumer control over services means that it is the consumer who has the primary responsibility for identifying needs, setting goals, developing plans and strategies, and achieving independent living objectives. Consumers in this model are active participants in the service process rather than passive recipients, as in the traditional medical or rehabilitation model of service delivery. Peer relationships are one of the key features of services organized around the principle of consumer control. In peer relationships, the two parties meet as equals.