Participant

The one-sentence answer

In the Self-Determination Program, the participant is the person receiving services — the person whose individual budget it is, and in whose name the spending plan is built.

What this means for you

The word matters more than it looks, because the budget belongs to the participant. Even where a parent, conservator or representative does the day-to-day work of running the plan, it is the participant's budget, built around the participant's goals. Program language is deliberate about this, and it is the thread running through how everything else is structured.

You will also hear "consumer" and "client." Consumer is the older regional center term and still appears constantly in official documents — including in UCI, the Unique Client Identifier that follows a person through the system. Participant is the term Self-Determination uses. They refer to the same person.

Where someone else acts on the participant's behalf, that person may be a conservator, a guardian, or an authorized representative. That role has real consequences beyond paperwork — it can determine whether that person may be paid to provide services. See legally responsible person, and settle it before anyone starts working.

A note on language, and we mean it. Many self-advocates prefer person-first or identity-first language over the institutional vocabulary the system uses. This site uses program terminology where precision requires it — because a family reading a DDS document needs to recognize the words in it — and plain, respectful language everywhere else. Where we use "participant" or "consumer" it is because that is what the paperwork says, not a statement about how anyone should be described.

For the detail-oriented

Who can be a participant

There is no separate test to pass. WIC 4685.8(b) puts it plainly: as of 1 July 2021 the program is available "on a voluntary basis to all regional center consumers who are eligible for the Self-Determination Program."

So the chain is short:

1. You meet the Lanterman Act definition of a developmental disability — see Lanterman Act, which sets out the test and the exclusions.
2. That makes you a regional center consumer.
3. From there, Self-Determination is open to you and it is your choice.

Two things follow that are worth being clear about.

It is voluntary — going in and coming out. Nobody can be placed in Self-Determination, and choosing it is not a permanent decision about the rest of your life.

There is no longer a waiting list or a lottery. The program ran with limited places during its early phase. Since 1 July 2021 it has been open to every eligible consumer, and anyone who tells you there are no places is working from old information.

The word changes depending on which part of the system is talking

The statute itself switches vocabulary: "consumer" across the Lanterman Act generally, "participant" inside the Self-Determination section. Same person. Nothing about your rights changes with the noun — it only tells you which part of the system wrote the document you are holding.

Still to come: a proper entry for UCI, the unique client identifier your regional center uses to refer to you. It appears on paperwork and your FMS will ask for it, and it deserves its own page rather than a line here.