Funding · Regional centers
If your athlete is a regional center client, training like ours may not have to come out of your pocket. Here's how the funding actually works in California — in plain language, without the acronym soup — and exactly where we fit today.
Start here
California law — the Lanterman Act — promises services and supports to people with developmental disabilities, and 21 nonprofit regional centers deliver on that promise. Every client has a service coordinator and a yearly plan, called an IPP, that spells out their goals and the services that support them.
Our corner of Southern California belongs to Harbor Regional Center — Long Beach, Torrance, the Harbor area, and the Bellflower area, with offices in Torrance and Long Beach. Served by a different regional center? Everything on this page still works the same way — the programs are statewide.
Since 2021, regional centers can again fund social recreation and similar services — which is exactly the neighborhood where movement, fitness, and coaching live. If being active is part of your athlete's plan, funding has a path.
Two roads
Regional center funding comes in two flavors, and the difference comes down to one question: who picks the provider?
You hold the wheel.
In the SDP, your athlete gets an individual budget — a yearly dollar amount based on their needs — and you decide how it's spent. You build a spending plan around the goals in their IPP, and a Financial Management Service (an FMS — think of it as a bookkeeper the regional center pays for) handles the money and pays the providers you choose.
Here's the part that matters for us: SDP providers don't have to be on the regional center's approved vendor list. Families choose who works with their athlete — a local business, a coach, a program like ours — and the FMS pays them directly.
If your athlete is in the SDP, we can work together now.
The regional center holds the wheel.
On the traditional road, your service coordinator arranges services and the regional center pays for them — but only through providers it has formally approved, a process called vendorization. Less paperwork lands on you, and the provider list is the provider list.
We're not a vendored provider yet. Vendorization is on our roadmap, because we want families on both roads to have access to this floor — and when it happens, families on traditional services will be able to have Train Unique written straight into the plan.
On the traditional side? Reach out anyway — we'll tell you honestly what's possible today, and you'll be the first to know when this changes.
What it means in practice
The Self-Determination Program is voluntary and open to regional center clients — families move onto it every month. It starts with a free orientation, and your service coordinator can put you on that path with one conversation.
It isn't for everyone. Holding the wheel also means holding a spending plan, and some families prefer the traditional road for good reasons. An independent facilitator — a person who helps run the process — can carry most of that weight if you want the control without the homework.
If you're weighing it, the state's official program page is worth ten minutes: dds.ca.gov/initiatives/sdp.
Your athlete's plan.
Your call.
Fitness, movement, recreation — if it belongs in your athlete's life, it belongs in the conversation about their IPP. That plan is where funding starts, on either road.
Already in the SDP? Look at where training fits in the spending plan — your FMS or independent facilitator can help. Not in it? Ask your service coordinator about SDP orientation.
Tell us about your athlete and where you are in the process. We'll talk with your FMS, keep the paperwork off your plate as much as we can, and get your athlete on the floor.
Said plainly
We can't promise your regional center will fund training — that decision belongs to your athlete's planning team, not to a gym's website. Regional centers also pay after other public resources that are responsible first, like schools and Medi-Cal, and your coordinator is the one who sorts that out. We're coaches, not benefits counselors — for decisions about the plan, Harbor Regional Center is the authority: harborrc.org, (310) 540-1711.
What we can promise: a straight answer about what's possible right now, help with our end of the paperwork, and a floor where somebody is genuinely happy to see your athlete walk in.