California’s 21 regional centers serve nearly 400,000 individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD). However, regional centers do not distribute services equitably. Data shows that on a per-person basis, regional centers spend about 50 cents on services for people of color with developmental disabilities for every dollar spent on services for those who are white.

Although we have seen many attempts at fixing this problem, inequities persist. We need to change how we approach the problem in two ways:

• Shift the focus from navigating the system to changing it by removing barriers that disproportionately restrict access to people of color.
• We must center the experts—disabled people of color who experience the impacts of regional center policies firsthand.

To ensure that their lived experience not only informs but drives future equity initiatives, California should invest in community-based participatory research, a research model designed specifically to center historically marginalized communities whose voices have typically been underrepresented in policymaking. CBPR has been used successfully in California and other states to analyze and address racial disparities in behavioral health, public health, and other related systems, and has proven to be an effective method for amplifying the voices of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, whose perspectives are rarely reflected in policy design.

While the study should be open-ended to allow participants to identify the root causes of racial disparities in their own communities, initial focus areas could include the racial impacts of:

• Gatekeeping policies that place the burden on disabled people to seek services from all other possible public systems before regional centers will consider funding them;
• Policies requiring family members to provide unpaid support to disabled loved ones who live with them, regardless of their individual circumstances;
• The broad discretion regional centers have to determine their own guidelines for when, how and for whom services are authorized; and
• The design and implementation of new and restored services.

This year, Disability Rights California is asking the state legislature to fund this study. This study is the first step in fixing the systemic issues in the regional center system. By identifying where structural barriers are, how they operate for communities of color, and how they can be dismantled, this study will help direct limited developmental services funds toward equity initiatives that are better targeted, more cost-effective, and ultimately more meaningful for people of color with disabilities.

For more information, view our full policy brief: From Navigation to Transformation: Addressing Inequities in California’s Regional Center System Through Community-Led Solutions