Background

Today, more than 7 million children with disabilities receive specialized education and related services tailored to their needs. This is thanks to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1990, which was originally named the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975. During the 2022-23 academic year, 66% of children with disabilities were integrated into general education classrooms for 80% or more of their school day. Early intervention services were also extended to more than 441,000 infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families.

While the law requires that children receiving special education services must have a transition plan by age 14, there is growing recognition that children should learn at a much earlier age the skills needed to effectively engage in this planning process in order to make their own decisions about work, school, and life after high school. TCDD invests in building skills and empowering young adults with DD to better say what they want and need in order to live self-determined lives. Through self-advocacy, people with DD can have greater impact on their own situations, on the public policies that affect them, and on the supports and services they receive.

Among the skills involved in becoming self-determined, choice-making is one of the first and most basic skills to develop and build upon. Choice-making is the “selection of an item or activity from an array of options at a particular moment in time.” Mastering choice-making skills requires development and consistent practice. People with DD too often have limited experience making choices.

At all ages, children can make choices each day on what to eat, how to dress, when to play, and how they interact with others. Granting children the autonomy to make choices, even if those choices include the possibility of errors, may appear risky to parents. Yet research shows that more practice with choice-making skills serves to improve quality of life. Children who are given more choice-making in play activities have more positive behavior outcomes.

More broadly, choice-making serves to empower children with disabilities by fostering a sense of responsibility and autonomy, enhancing children’s communication abilities, and contributing to overall community safety through reducing abuse and neglect. By promoting choice-making in children at younger ages, they will be in a better position to make self-determined choices as adults.

Several state councils on DD have developed programs and resources to support choice-making among youth. Here are two examples:

• The Michigan Developmental Disabilities Council, in partnership with members of the Supported Decision-Making Coalition, created a toolkit called Your Life, Your Choice that offers resources for each stage of life.
• The Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities, along with the Family Voices organization, created resources and fact sheets to encourage families to support children to set goals and make their own choices.

Project Description

TCDD will fund a project to better prepare youth with DD, from birth to age 14, to lead self-determined lives using a range of strategies and tools to enhance choice-making skills. The selection of this age group is intended to supplement the education and training already available to youth older than 14.

The project will develop and demonstrate innovative models for children with DD, families, educators, and support providers that can be replicated to promote opportunities for self-advocates to better say what they want and need. The project should compile evidence-based practices for building choice-making skills among children at all developmental levels. This may include a review of existing literature and programs as well as the collection of new data through conversations with children with DD, their parents, educators, and providers.

The grantee awarded funding for this project should incorporate methods for children and families to practice choice-making skills. The grantee must also consider the full range of communication abilities. Youth with limited language or significant disabilities can make choices by letting others know their needs and preferences in their own ways. To this end, the grantee should consider the following questions:

• How does each child communicate choices to their family, teachers, and others in their support circles?
• Does a child need extra time to process choices?
• Does a child benefit from visual and verbal cues?
• Does a child benefit from using technology to communicate preferences? 
         

During the project, the grantee will complete the following tasks:

• Review the key components and barriers to effective choice-making among youth with DD from birth to 14
• Identify evidence-based practices on how to best support, inspire, and improve the choice making skills among children from birth to 14
• Disseminate high-quality, experiential, evidence-based programs that promote knowledge and choice-making practices among children from birth to 14 as well as their parents or guardians
• Disseminate high-quality, experiential, evidence-based programs that promote knowledge and choice-making practices among parents or guardians of children from birth to 14
• Engage children and parents or guardians in community settings both inside and outside of school
• Provide innovative opportunities for young adults to use and develop skills within their homes and communities
• Provide innovative opportunities for young adults to facilitate and use peer support
• Promote opportunities for young adults to step into leadership roles within homes, schools, and other community settings
• Connect and build relationships among youth, parents, and family members to support lifelong choice-making practices
• Evaluate and document the impact of choice-making practices in the lives of young adults and families
• Provide recommendations for modifying existing education models to incorporate more choice-making practices for children from birth to 14      
    

The grantee awarded funding must have a plan for sharing any training curricula or other materials when the project ends. The grantee may consider developing at least one self-paced learning module or resource that allows users to access to the learning content at any time. The grantee may use TCDD’s learning-management system, Oasis, as needed.

Project materials must be translated into Spanish and other appropriate languages based on the community in which they delivered. All training curricula and other project materials must be reviewed and approved by TCDD before they are used.

When applying for this RFA, you must provide the following information:

• Explain how you will identify and recruit participants as well as how you will make the project available to both youth with DD and family members
• Describe how you will collect participant data and measure outcomes of greater choice-making skills among youth with DD (see the Data Collection section for more information)
• Explain how you will collect stories to document the youth and caregiver experience with choice-making before participating in the project
• Outline all contents of the project
• Describe specific training goals and learning objectives of the project
• Describe all products you will develop for the project (for example, virtual training modules, training curricula, or other educational resources)
• Describe a plan for how products could be shared after the grant ends
• Describe how you will incorporate strategies for children and families to practice choice-making skills in daily life
• Explain how you will measure skill and knowledge gains after project participation
• Explain how you will follow up to collect stories that document the youth and caregiver experience with choice-making practices after participation in the project

Participants

The project must focus on improving choice-making among youth with DD from birth to 14 of all abilities and communication styles. Increasing choice-making opportunities for youth with DD at these ages also involves support from parents, family members, and others. The project should include strategies to involve a child’s parents and others in their support network, including early childhood providers and educators.

The grantee for this project should identify and report specific strategies to recruit and include individuals with DD from diverse racial, gender, and cultural groups in Texas.

The grantee may choose to initiate the project with specific age and cultural groups or may choose representative sites in select areas of the state and expand capacity and participation throughout the grant.

Outcomes and Outputs

The project must collect participant data to provide TCDD with the following information, at minimum:

• The number of participants in the project, including those with DD and family members
• The demographic characteristics of project participants (for example: gender, ethnicity, age, and geographic location)      
    

Applicants for this RFA must include a detailed evaluation plan for tracking skills, knowledge gains, and choice-making practices over time. The project must develop pre-training and post-training evaluation methods to identify knowledge and skills gained as a result of the training. These methods can include the following examples:

• Identifying the number of participants who report increased knowledge and skills in choice-making in daily life
• Identifying the number of individuals, family members, providers, educators, and others who feel more confident using choice-making strategies
• Identifying the number of participants who increase the practice of making choices in daily life
• Tracking examples and collecting stories of choice-making strategies used by project participants (individuals, family members, providers, and educators) before and after participation
• Tracking examples and collecting stories of the types of choices made and how participants communicated individual choices
        

The project should collect contact information and follow up with training participants to report on their choice-making activities after participation in the training.

Data Collection

The grantee awarded funding for this project will collect data and measure outcomes for all project participants. The grantee must collect participant data in four categories:

• People with DD
• Family members of people with DD
• Professional service providers to people with DD
• All other participants      
    

For each of these categories, the collected data must include:

• Total number of participants
• Total number of participants who report they can better say what they want and need as a result of the project
• Demographic information on race/ethnicity, Hispanic origin, sex, age, and geographic region
• Overall satisfaction with the project
• Pre-project and post-project outcomes
• Increased advocacy activities or appointments/elections to leadership positions (if applicable)

Grant Award and Term

TCDD has approved funding of up to $300,000 per year for one organization for up to five years. Funding is provided to TCDD by the U.S. Administration for Community Living, Department of Health and Human Services, per the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act. For projects conducting work in federally designated poverty areas (PDF, 6 pages, 935 KB), non-federal matching funds of at least 10% of total project costs are required. For projects conducting work in non-poverty areas, non-federal matching funds of at least 25% of total project costs are required.

How to Apply

Due to technical issues with our application system, we have extended the submission deadline for this RFA to 11:59 p.m. CT on Wednesday Aug. 28. If you have had any technical issues with submitting an application, please send us a detailed description by email to apply@tcdd.texas.gov, and our systems technician will work with you to resolve the issue. If you have already successfully submitted your application, then it is in our system and you do not need to take any action. 

To apply for this RFA, please email apply@tcdd.texas.gov to request an application. Please indicate which RFA you are requesting an application for. After we receive your request, we’ll email you an online application.    

Before applying, you should review our How to Apply webpage for further application instructions and requirements.