What it is and what it isn’t
Traditional care planning models are often designed to assess needs, allocate services and make decisions for people based on keeping them “healthy and safe”. This leaves little room for individual choice.
Personalization and person-centered thinking is about going beyond this traditional care model towards supporting people to live the lives that they choose.
Person-centered thinking is:
- Based around a person with the person at the center of the planning process.
- Routed in the principles of rights, independence, inclusion and choice.
- Performed in the context of a person having a right to make a full and valued contribution in their community.
- A commitment to achieve what is important to the person now and in the future.
- An ongoing process of listening, learning and action that helps a person to get what they want out of life.
Person-centered thinking is not:
- The same as assessment and care planning: it is not concerned with eligibility for resources.
- A form filling exercise – what is learned about how the person wishes to live must be acted upon.
- A replacement for other necessary forms of planning.
- A new concept – person-centered thinking has been around since the 1970s.
