Person Centered Practices

Person Centered Practices are Embedded into the Culture of Our Agency

What is Person Centered Thinking?

For people being supported by services, it is not person centered planning that matters as much as the pervasive presence of person centered thinking.  If people who use services are to have positive control over their lives, if they are to have self directed lives within their own communities, then those who are around the person, especially those who do the day to day work, need to have person centered thinking skills. Only a small percentage of people need to know how to write good person centered plans, but everyone involved needs to have good skills in person centered thinking, in the value based skills that underlie the planning. There are a number of reasons for this. Teaching and supporting the use of person centered thinking skills will mean that:

  • It is more likely that plans will be used and acted on and that the lives of people who use services will improve
  • You will have a number of ways to get plans started
  • Updating the plans will occur “naturally”, needing less effort and time

Every style of person centered planning is rooted in a person centered way of thinking.  It is made up of a set of value based skills that result in seeing the person differently and give us a way of acting on what is learned.Training in person centered planning is training in a way of thinking as much as it is in a way of developing a plan.  In essential lifestyle planning we have identified basic skills and tools that help learners understand and embrace this way of thinking.

Essential Lifestyle Planning

Our Person Centered Planning Process

 Essential lifestyle planning (ELP) is a way to discover and describe

  • What is important to a person in everyday life and
  • What others need to know and do so that what is important to each person is present while any issues of health and safety are addressed.

Community Building Even When the Laundry is Not Done

The housework is never done – is it?  At NorthStar we are committed to supporting people to meet all of their daily responsibilities (like doing the laundry, and cleaning their homes), however we believe that supporting people to have valued community lives is equally important.  We believe that merely being present in the community is not necessarily valued participation.  We have partnered with Helen Sanderson Associates, UK to utilize a set of skills or tools that can help our staff be more successful at supporting the people we support to have valued relationships and community membership.