The disAbility Law Center of Virginia is an interesting organization that serves as the federally mandated Protection and Advocacy organization for the state of Virginia; every state in the U.S. has one. It serves the interests of all disabled individuals in Virginia and has a combination of law and public policy work, which was super interesting to me. I have really been enjoying being a part of a smaller organization that does important work, as I got assigned a fairly significant research task upfront.

My initial goals of dLCV were to help on several research projects and at least one informational packet that would be prepared for the public. However, I soon amended this as I began to work on a massive research project that was more complex than I initially thought. Instead, I decided that my goal was to thoroughly understand this area of policy and also prepare concrete proposals for the variety of contexts it can be found in. I specifically have looked into policy for people with developmental disabilities in psychiatric hospitals, forensic settings, and schools. More specifically, I looked into how seclusion and restraint are used as practices and how they can better be eliminated in these settings. Although this seems simple, I quickly realized that my research was going to have to be more vast than I thought as the issues are very complex in this area. I looked into VA code, federal legislation, court cases, scientific studies, various reports, and policy from other jurisdictions.