Policy and Research

Our research centers disability support service portability and continuity, with particular attention to geography, eligibility rules, agency procedures, and cross-jurisdictional coordination.

Policy Framework

Disability Support Service Portability

A policy framework for keeping disability supports consistent across geographic lines, temporary travel, relocation, and major life changes.

Research Focus

Geographic Lock-In

Research on how location-based rules can limit where people live, work, study, travel, and build relationships.

Enforced Barriers

Structural conditions that systematically restrict participation, mobility, stability, autonomy, or opportunity for people with disabilities.

Systems Model

Structural Model of Disability

A model for examining how policy design shapes the choices and opportunities available to people with disabilities.

Understanding Enforced Barriers

Enforced Barriers describes four interconnected ways disability support systems can restrict the participation they are meant to enable. The framework looks at how policies and structures can create dependency, invisibility, immobility, and insecurity in the lives of people with disabilities.

Enforced Dependency

Systems structured in ways that increase reliance on systems, approvals, fragmented services, or external gatekeepers in order to maintain basic participation and stability.

Enforced Invisibility

The systemic minimization, exclusion, or misunderstanding of disability experiences within policy, public narratives, organizational design, and social structures.

Enforced Immobility

Structural limitations on geographic, economic, educational, or professional mobility caused by fragmented disability systems and residency-based eligibility requirements.

Enforced Insecurity

The instability created when access to healthcare, services, income, transportation, housing, or daily support remains conditional, fragmented, or vulnerable to interruption.

Together, these dimensions provide a way to identify patterns that may look separate when examined one case at a time.

Administrative Boundaries

We map how jurisdictional boundaries affect eligibility, service delivery, and transitions, then examine options for greater continuity.