The Power of Possibility: CPWD’s Core Services and the Independent Living Legacy
Image: A group of consumers in a Peer Support Group are outside in a garden
Everyone deserves the opportunity to live with independence, purpose, and joy, no exceptions. CPWD’s work is guided by this belief every day, and it's brought to life through what are known as the Core Services of Centers for Independent Living (CILs).
These Core Services are pathways to self-determination, community connection, and long-term independence for people with disabilities. They are also part of a powerful legacy: the national Independent Living movement, which has championed freedom, equality, and dignity for over 50 years.
What Are the Core Services?
To understand the Core Services, it helps to first understand what a Center for Independent Living (CIL) is.
A CIL is a nonprofit, community-based organization run by and for people with disabilities, created to support individuals in living independently and fully participating in their communities. Unlike traditional service providers, CILs operate under the belief that people with disabilities are the experts in their own lives, and that with the right support—not control—they can make informed choices, overcome barriers, and live with dignity. To learn more about what a CIL is, watch this video.
Centers for Independent Living are unique in that they are:
Consumer-controlled – A majority of staff and board members are people with disabilities.
Non-residential – They do not operate group homes or institutions; instead, they focus on community-based, person-driven services.
Mission-driven – Rooted in the values of equity, accessibility, and self-determination.
There are hundreds of CILs across the United States, including CPWD. Each is mandated by federal law to provide the five Core Services that are the foundational supports that help individuals lead self-directed, empowered lives.
Each of these Core Services plays a key role in helping people design their own path, reach their personal goals, and navigate life with greater freedom, confidence, and connection.
Why These Core Services?
The five Core Services are the result of decades of advocacy, research, and community experience that identified what actually works to promote lasting independence. In the early days of the Independent Living movement, leaders in the disability community recognized that traditional services often focused more on managing people than empowering them. These services tended to follow a medical or custodial model, where professionals controlled the plan and decisions were made for the individual.
By contrast, CILs introduced a new approach: one where people with disabilities lead the process, define their own goals, and get support from peers who’ve navigated similar experiences. Over time, five areas stood out as essential across all communities: advocacy, access to information, practical life skills, peer mentorship, and support during major life transitions. These proved to be more effective, sustainable, and transformative.
Recognizing their impact, Congress included these five Core Services in the 1992 amendments to the Rehabilitation Act, making them mandatory for all federally funded CILs. Today, they remain the foundation of independent living work nationwide, not because they’re required, but because they are proven to create real, lasting change.
1. Advocacy: Empowering Every Voice
Image: Members of CPWD staff, board of directors, and consumers stand together in the hall of the Denver Capitol on Disability Rights Advocacy Day in March 2025
Advocacy is about empowering people with disabilities to claim their rights and influence the world around them. Through self‑advocacy, we support individuals in learning what their rights are, whether as tenants, employees, patients, or family members, and building the confidence and tools to insist on fairness, understanding, and respect.
Our Systems Advocacy takes that individual experience and uses it to shape broader change, ensuring that laws, policies, benefits, and public services (housing, transportation, health care, education, etc.) are accessible, equitable, and responsive to the needs of the disability community. Far too often, our voice is left out of decision‑making. Systems Advocacy brings the voice of people with disabilities to the decision-making process. From working with elected officials and disability commissions to promoting legislation like universal design or improving access standards, CPWD works to ensure that the voice of people with disabilities is heard. To learn more, visit our Advocacy page.
2. Information & Referral: Knowledge Is Power
Having access to the right information opens doors to addressing important life needs and living independently. CPWD connects individuals with disability-related resources, services, tools, and support; everything from housing and transportation to assistive technology and adaptive recreation. When people know their options, they can make informed, empowered choices. Go to our Information & Referral page here to access important resources for yourself or loved ones.
3. Independent Living Skills Training: Building Confidence and Capability
Learning basic and more advanced skills is often the key that unlocks independent living for people. At CPWD, our Independent Living Advisors (ILAs) partner with consumers at the very start, listening to what independence means to them, what their goals are, and what they want their life to look like. From there, ILAs and consumers co‑create a personalized independent living plan that includes skill‑building and resource access. Independent Living Skills Training (ILST) offers training in skills such as budgeting, navigating public transportation, shopping for and cooking nutritious meals, and independently maintaining activities of daily living. ILST also includes more sophisticated trainings such as assistive technology for people with vision loss or who are blind, communication technology, and how to use self-advocacy in communication, orientation & mobility training, job preparation and job seeking, asking for accommodations, and managing benefits and income.
Image: A group of consumers in the Beyond Vision group participates in a white cane training.
Independent living goals and current skills are unique to each person with a disability. CPWD tailors services and supports to meet the current and ongoing needs of each person. Many ILAs continue working with people for months or years. As someone achieves one goal, they often set a new one. Even after successful goal achievement, our ILAs keep in touch to ensure that people have what they need to maintain independence.
One inspiring example of how Independent Living Skills Training can transform lives comes from Amy (name changed), a longtime consumer who has been with CPWD for nearly nine years. Now in her 80s, Amy has lived with very low vision for most of her life and is also hard of hearing, identifying as part of the DeafBlind community. She actively participates in several low vision peer groups, both remotely and in person, and serves as a co-facilitator of the No Light Perception Peer Support Group alongside Darcy McLean, CPWD’s Low Vision Skills Trainer & Peer Support Group Facilitator.
When CPWD offered a 10-week One Touch Self-Defense course designed for people who are blind or have low vision, Amy jumped at the opportunity. With the support of a Support Service Provider (SSP), an instructor who is also blind, and Darcy as her sparring partner, Amy completed the entire course. She learned powerful, practical skills such as grip releases and elbow locks, and became highly effective at applying them. During one practice session, Amy was able to stop a simulated aggressor using a wrist-release technique in just seconds, demonstrating how accessible and empowering self-defense training can be for someone with no vision and limited hearing.
Amy’s experience became more than just personal growth. It turned into community leadership. Together, she and Darcy began sharing their story with others in the low vision and DeafBlind communities, encouraging people not to let age or disability limit what they believe they can do.
“I really enjoyed the course,” Amy said. “It gave me confidence, and I want others to know they can do it too.”
4. Peer Support: Strength in Shared Experience
Image: Two consumers from the Beyond Vision peer group participate in a low-vision art class.
There is nothing more powerful than connecting with someone who has walked a similar path. Our Peer Support program brings people with disabilities together to share experiences, offer guidance, and lift each other. These authentic connections foster growth, resilience, and lifelong community.
Peer Support groups are a place where individuals with disabilities can learn skills as a group, participate in outings or collective supportive conversations about current needs, encourage and inspire each other through shared experience and peer mentorship, and make friends and find belonging and purpose.
Check out our Service Calendar to find a Peer Group that would be right for you!
5. Transition Services: Embracing New Chapters
CPWD offers two unique transition services: Youth Transitions and Nursing Home Transitions.
CPWD’s Youth Transitions Program works with individuals with disabilities between the ages of 14 and 24. We help them prepare for the transition between high school and the adult world. We offer individual and group services, Peer Support groups, and educational workshops. Some of the topics covered include: cultivating social skills, building self-esteem, how to engage in community, and peer mentorship. In addition, Youth Transitions helps youth graduating from high school and their families prepare for the next phase of life with services such as employment skills training, self-advocacy as a young adult, seeking continuing education, and other skills needed to successfully transition to adulthood.
CPWD’s Nursing Transitions Program’s primary goal is to transition people with disabilities out of nursing care and medical institutions and into their own homes to live independent lives. This is a process that involves a lot of steps and collaboration, in which our staff are experienced experts. Staff offer life skills training, peer mentorship, and household set-up coordination to ensure individuals leaving a nursing home are supported and have the skills they need to live independently.
Living independently is the right of each and every person, no matter how differently-abled they are. Our transitions program ensures that the benefits, health, and medication needs, and supports for activities of daily living are secure and in place so that people with disabilities in our community can live independent and fulfilling lives.
The Core Services are stepping stones to greater independence, self-direction, and quality of life. They reflect a commitment to person-first support, where each individual’s unique dreams and goals come first.
Every day, these services open doors: to employment, to education, to friendships, to meaningful community participation. Independence looks different for everyone, and that’s the beauty of it. These services are designed to meet people where they are and support them as they grow into where they want to be.
A Legacy of Leadership, Equity, and Self-Determination
The Core Services provided by CPWD are part of a powerful and hard-won legacy rooted in the national disability rights movement that emerged in the 1960s and 70s. At a time when people with disabilities were routinely institutionalized, segregated from public life, and denied access to education, employment, and community participation, a growing number of visionary leaders began to rise up and demand something different: freedom, dignity, and equality.
One of the most influential figures in this movement was Ed Roberts, often called the "father of the Independent Living movement." A polio survivor who used a wheelchair and a ventilator, Ed defied the odds by becoming the first student with significant disabilities to attend the University of California, Berkeley. Facing resistance at every turn, from the university to the dormitories to the classroom, he didn’t just advocate for himself; he sparked a revolution. (To learn more about Ed Roberts, check out this previous article.)
Image: This black and white image from the early 1970s shows two men holding a large banner that says “Center for Independent Living Berkeley” while walking down a street.
In 1972, Ed Roberts and other activists founded the first Center for Independent Living (CIL) in Berkeley, California. Their vision was clear: create a place run by and for people with disabilities, where they could get peer support, access community-based services, and take charge of their own lives. The idea was radical at the time, and it changed everything.
The success of the Berkeley CIL quickly spread across the country. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, advocacy efforts led to the establishment of federal funding for CILs through the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and later amendments. These laws recognized the importance of Core Services: advocacy, information and referral, independent living skills training, peer support, and transition services, as foundational supports for empowering individuals and fostering self-determination.
These laws also recognized something even more important: that people with disabilities must be at the center of decision-making, not just in their own lives, but in the organizations that serve them. Today, all Centers for Independent Living, including CPWD, are required to be consumer-controlled, meaning that the majority of staff and board members are people with disabilities. This ensures that the services are grounded in lived experience, mutual respect, and a shared understanding of what true independence means.
Over the decades, the Independent Living movement has continued to evolve, fighting for and winning keystone legislation like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, expanding access to education and employment, and building a more inclusive and accessible world for future generations. Through it all, the Core Services have remained a steady foundation, supporting individuals in building the lives they choose, on their own terms.
Centering the Individual—Always
Everything we do at CPWD is based on consumer choice, respect, and empowerment. Each person deserves the opportunity to make their own decisions, explore their potential, and take the lead in creating a fulfilling life. Whether you're looking for support, offering support, or just learning more, you are welcome here. This is called person-centered services. We focus on the person’s self-identified needs and goals, and bring the resources and supports needed for them to overcome the barriers to those goals. It’s about supporting and empowering, at the same time.
If you or someone you know could benefit from our Core Services, we invite you to reach out. Let’s work together to create a future that reflects the strength, creativity, and brilliance of every person in our community.