An SDP budget is the dollars and cents that you have available to spend on services throughout the year. The Regional Center has to approve the budget. The spending plan is essentially how you're going to take that budget, break it down, and spend it on services.
Participants have three options for support in creating their Self-Determination spending plan:
- Hire an independent facilitator to help create the spending plan, find and hire the right people, decide how much they should be paid, and mediate issues with providers. The independent facilitator can be paid out of the SDP budget.
- Use your Regional Center service coordinator for help with a spending plan (keep in mind that many have high caseloads and some people consider it to be a conflict of interest).
- Manage the process yourself.
Setting it up is the hardest part. Once everything is set up, it's just little tweaks along the way. Some people use an independent facilitator in the beginning and then manage it themselves once things get going.
Note: Regional Center uses the terms amendment and addendum interchangeably, but in practice, amendment is typically used when it comes to a budget, and addendum is for the IPP.
For more information, check out our article Self-Determination 101.
