T-TAP: Parent's View

Dale Dutton: Yes, and probably the best place to do that is either with their funding counselor, perhaps someone with the Department of Rehabilitation, but certainly with their local service provider. I can't emphasis that enough. If they don't find what they're looking for there, find another one. But everyone’s life is focused on, as we've tried to focus on Dusty's life. I think work is a part of life. I think friends are a part of life. Her home situation is a part of life. I want her life be as rich and full as I can have it. I want, we need, someone to help us do that and that's what the service system is supposed to be out there for.

Interviewer: Well this is probably going to sound like a very simplistic statement. But when I listen to you talk, it almost seems to me that you expect Dusty to have a life just like anybody else would have a life.

Dale Dutton: Let me tell you a funny story about that. When Dusty did her first person-centered plan, we lived in one of those great-big Spanish houses in Southern California. She was about 15, and she had 20 or 30 of her friends over for an afternoon. We had some well-known people come down to facilitate the planning meeting. Dusty, as I said, was very clear that she wanted to be on stage. She wanted to have a family. She wanted children in her life, some things that really surprised mom and dad a lot.

But at the end of all of it, they asked where she wanted to live. She said she wanted to live right there, and she sort of looked around at the house. We said something to the effect, "Dusty might move into an apartment someday, and she could live down the street." She said, "No. Mom and Dad are going to move into the apartment, and I'm going to live in the house." She now rents her own house in Marin County. Section 8, it's a three-bedroom, two-bath lovely home. This family lives with her. She has a gardener and a dog. Mom and dad live in a fairly small condo about 5 miles away. It all came true. All we had to do was listen to her. Nobody planned it; it just worked out that way.

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