Subash Rajavel

If your family lives in San Bernardino or Riverside County and is exploring California's Self-Determination Program (SDP), Inland Regional Center (IRC) is your starting point. IRC is one of California's 21 Regional Centers and one of the largest in the state, serving roughly 39,800 individuals with developmental disabilities across the Inland Empire. That scale cuts both ways. It means more families ahead of you have already walked the SDP path at IRC, and more Independent Facilitators and...

For years, you have been the one who signs the forms, sits in the meetings, and speaks for your child. Then a birthday arrives, and in the eyes of the law, your child with autism becomes an adult. For California families, turning 18 is not just an emotional milestone. It is the moment when a whole set of services, benefits, and decisions quietly shift onto new footing. This is also the season when California's Self-Determination Program (SDP), a state program that lets families direct their...

It is natural to begin your California Self-Determination Program (SDP) journey feeling excited and uncertain at the same time. Let us talk about two very different families caught in a similar predicament. One is brand new to SDP, arriving from traditional regional center services, where the Regional Center paid every vendor directly and you never touched the money. The other is already in SDP and is moving from one Financial Management Services (FMS) provider to another. Both are asking the...