Nicole LeBlanc and the Radical Practice of Dignity

Dignity Over Control: Redefining Disability

"No one is too disabled to live and work in the community."

Nicole LeBlanc just turned 40, an age that often invites retrospection. In her case, it sharpens something else: a moral clarity forged by experience and a refusal to accept systems that mistake control for care.

A New Englander by formation and temperament, Nicole is a seasoned public policy work/consultant with 15+ years of experience working at the intersection of disability policy, economic security, and civil rights. Her portfolio reads like a map of the American safety net - Medicaid and Medicare, SSI and SSDI, disability employment, benefits cliffs, Home and Community Based Services (HCBS), health disparities, housing, education, and poverty. But to reduce her work to policy domains misses the point. What animates LeBlanc's career is a principled commitment to the social and economic rights of people most often rendered invisible: survivors, people experiencing homelessness, and people with disabilities navigating systems designed without them in mind.

In 2019, that commitment was publicly recognized when she received the David Joyce Advocate of the Year Award. The honor mattered - but not because it marked arrival. It marked continuity.

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Diagnosed Late, Labeled Early

Nicole did not receive an autism diagnosis as a child. What she did receive - early and persistently - was what advocates now call low expectation syndrome. Labeled with speech and language impairments, she was tracked, managed, and underestimated. Like many disabled children, she learned early that institutions often speak about you long before they speak with you.

Those lessons hardened during her time at Job Corps. Marketed as opportunity, the environment she encountered was abusive and chaotic: constant swearing, racial insults, unchecked hostility, and chronic stress that manifested physically - difficulty breathing among them. The promise was skill-building and independence; the reality was survival.

In elementary school kids wrote "I hate Nicole LeBlanc" on the bathroom hall. The cruelty was casual, public, and instructive. She found relative safety spending time with teachers and a small circle of peers, often connected through shared vulnerability, including her visible skin disorder. Still, the message was unmistakable: belonging was conditional.

After Job Corps, she returned to Vermont. The move was less retreat than recalibration. Nicole's parents viewed the JobCorps experience as a failure.

Policy as Lived Experience

Today, Nicole lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, where her policy work has become increasingly personal. She is currently fighting the State of Maryland over access to Home- and Community-Based Services - arguing that HCBS should be an entitlement, not a privilege rationed through waiting lists and administrative delay. Even though she is Not at risk of ICF level of care she should still be eligible

Her critique is not abstract. It is grounded in comparative knowledge and lived reality.

"In Vermont," she explains, "shared living is the bread and butter of services. Someone gets paid to live with you and support you. It's not perfect, but it's oriented toward life in the community."

Maryland, by contrast, relies heavily on group homes and institutional settings. Rules masquerade as safety. Schedules substitute for autonomy.

"If you want breakfast," she notes, "you have to get out of bed before 8:00."

The question Nicole keeps returning to is deceptively simple: Is this actually community - or just containment with better branding?

The Dignity of Risk

That question sits at the heart of Nicole's work with the Disability Employment Technical Assistance (TA) Center, where she serves as a Self-Advocate Advisor. In a recent blog, she outlined a person-centered approach to employment that challenges one of the most entrenched pathologies of the helping professions: liability mode.

Person-centered practice, as Nicole understands it, begins with the dignity of risk, the idea that a life without the possibility of failure is not a dignified life at all.

"Don't be overprotective," she urges. "The freedom to do things outside your comfort zone matters. It can be as simple as taking the bus alone."

Risk, in this framing, is not recklessness. It is a recognition that growth requires trust, and that constant supervision often says more about institutional fear than individual capacity. Letting go is not abandonment; it is respect.

Nicole situates this argument within her own experience as a survivor of low expectation syndrome, ableism, and discrimination. She is explicit about the damage caused when systems assume incapacity rather than presume competence.

"We want the same things," she says of people with disabilities. "Connection. Purpose. Stability. A chance to contribute."

Yet dominant narratives continue to frame "community" as something reserved for the so-called high functioning. LeBlanc pushes back hard against that fiction.

"No one is too disabled to live and work in the community," she insists. "We can do both - if we're given the right supports."

Liability culture asks, What if something bad happens? Nicole flips the question: What is already happening when people are denied ordinary chances to live?

She also highlights a harsh reality: some in society simply do not want disabled people to exist. People with autism, she notes, face the highest rates of suicide and accidental drowning. Children elope and run away even with caregivers - they often do not thrive in rigid group settings. These are not failures of individuals, but of the systems designed around them. And, critically, disability is profitable; financial incentives can shape care more than human need.

Employment, Reimagined

Nicole is a strong proponent of discovery and customized employment - approaches that begin not with job openings, but with people. Skills are contextual. Interests evolve. Capacity is relational.

Central to her vision is economic justice. Employment that pays subminimum wages, she argues, is not inclusion - it is exploitation.

"Everyone should be paid minimum wage or higher," she says. "Work has to mean dignity."

She is blunt about what not to do, listing key don'ts for a person-centered approach:

• Don't be overprotective and risk-averse.
• Don't hold people with disabilities to higher standards than those without. For example, bouncing a check or getting on the wrong bus should not result in harsher punishment.
• Don't use offensive or outdated terms like special needs.
• Don't treat adults with disabilities as children - avoid introducing them as, "This is my foster daughter" or referencing developmental age like "the mind of an 8-year-old."
• Avoid the developmental age mindset and the disability double standard, where small mistakes by neurotypical people are tolerated but errors by people with disabilities are punished more harshly.
• Don't speak too fast in meetings. Slow down, allow people to follow the discussion, take time-outs, and check in if decisions are being made.
• Don't use "ABC soup" or alphabet soup. Excessive acronyms and jargon assume everyone knows the terms and create confusion.
• Don't use sarcasm, idioms, or sugar-coat it. Tell it like it is. Idioms aren't universal - get to the point and avoid unnecessary complication.

Nicole emphasizes creativity and challenging the status quo. "When you've always done what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got," she says. Payment reform in Vermont illustrates the point: underbilling, fraud, and missed opportunities show how sticking to tradition can leave people behind.

She advocates for eliminating IQ limits, income requirements, and other barriers.

"People are falling through the cracks," she notes. "Everyone should be able to get services who need them. Right now, you have to be in crisis in order to get HCBS. I've been to the ER five times in the past five years. Intense support is costly, but providing services up front saves money elsewhere."

Language, Power, and Erasure

For Nicole, dignity is inseparable from language. Person-centered practice begins not with forms or service plans, but with a simple, often-overlooked question: How do you want to be referred to?

She urges practitioners to ask people whether they prefer people-first or identity-first language - and to respect the answer. Equally important is what not to say. LeBlanc is unequivocal in rejecting terms like special needs, high functioning, low functioning, or slurs that have long been used to rationalize exclusion. These categories flatten human complexity and quietly signal whose lives are considered valuable.

"My child has special needs," she says, "the response is predictable. That word can make a child feel like an object of pity. Don't all kids have needs? Aren't all kids special? The term is detested by kids and adults alike. Assumptions take over, we rob kids of opportunities to define themselves. In adoption, children labeled as special needs are often the last to be adopted."

Nicole aligns this critique with broader disability pride: a movement celebrating disability as a natural part of human diversity. Person-centered planning should focus on supporting individuals in discovering goals, hopes, and dreams in specific areas of life, such as employment. It requires very little advice, maps the individual's desires, and prioritizes the best interest of the person rather than the system. Overprotection and risk avoidance, though often justified, can prevent meaningful discovery and growth.

People with intellectual disabilities are also disproportionately at risk for sexual assault and domestic violence, underscoring the necessity of autonomy and informed support.

Competent, Committed Support

Central to achieving these goals is clarity about who can provide support around a person's specific objectives, whether employment, health, or financial independence. Support can come from a job coach, direct support professional, shared living provider, family member, or other allies and friends. What matters is competence, training, and longevity. The high turnover rate among direct support professionals, exacerbated by COVID, has created a shortage of skilled and committed providers.

Nicole emphasizes: the support network must believe in us and stay consistent. Stability in staffing and a culture of respect are as vital as the service itself. Staff turnover is traumatizing.

Accessibility in process mirrors accessibility in life. Person-centered planning meetings should use plain language, 4th-6th grade reading level, 14-point or higher font, and visuals to ensure everyone can actively participate. Employers should use clear, simple language, rethink cover letters and traditional hiring processes, and recognize that some applicants may need long-term job coaching to succeed. Studies demonstrate that hiring people with disabilities reduces turnover, increases innovation, and offers net benefits to organizations and customers.

Disability education matters. Nicole calls for US Department of Education Disability 101 courses and high school empathy classes. She stresses that disability is factual and neutral, whereas terms like special needs promote pity and reinforce discrimination. Disability is natural; euphemisms obscure individuality and perpetuate exclusion.

A Life That Refuses Erasure

Nicole LeBlanc's story resists the neat arc of inspiration. There is no triumphant overcoming, no tidy resolution. What there is, instead, is rigor: intellectual, ethical, and personal.

She knows the policies. She knows the acronyms. But she also knows the waiting rooms, the group homes, the bathroom walls, and the quiet violence of low expectations. She knows what happens when safety becomes a justification for control - and when language becomes a tool of erasure.

At forty, Nicole stands not as a symbol, but as a challenge - to policymakers, providers, clinicians, employers, and advocates alike. If we are serious about dignity, we must be serious about risk. If we are serious about inclusion, we must be serious about language. And if we are serious about justice, we must stop treating disabled lives as negotiable.

The work, as she demonstrates, is not theoretical. It is lived.

Nicole LeBlanc is open for business. Her consulting rate is $50-100 per hour. Reach out to her at 802-505-0253 or linkedin.com/in/nicole-leblanc-12276034

About the Author

George Cassidy Payne is a freelance journalist, poet, and public policy writer with a focus on disability rights, social justice, and community empowerment. George combines lived experience and policy expertise to illuminate the intersection of systems, advocacy, and human dignity. He has worked as a 988 Suicide Prevention Counselor, nonprofit creative strategist, and adjunct philosophy instructor, bringing a nuanced lens to issues of equity, inclusion, and social impact. George's work has appeared in both local and national outlets, and he is committed to amplifying voices that are often unheard.

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