Personal Empowerment &

Individualized Support

Person-centered services is an approach to providing services based on social and individual empowerment. In summary, services that are Person-Centered place emphasis on transforming the options available to an individual, rather than on “fixing” or changing the individual. It is a set of approaches designed to assist persons in planning for their life, and providing support towards achieving their goals.

Person-centered service providers such as Employment Links discover and act on what is important to the individual, ensuring that persons with disabilities have choices in their daily lives.

Services that are Person-Centered place emphasis on continual listening and learning, focusing on what is important to the individual both now and in the future. Such conversations and supports include family, friends, social workers, case managers, home staff, guardians, employment support agency, and all other significant people in the individual’s life. Person-centered services involve the individual receiving the service (and other persons listed above) in developing a CSSP (Coordinated Services and Supports Plan) that allows for community participation and quality of life for the individual. In contrast, traditional models of planning have focused on the person’s deficits and negative behaviors, labeling the person and creating a dis-empowering mindset from the start.

A CSSP (Coordinated Services and Supports Plan) for each person is updated as and when the person and their team decide that changes are needed or wanted, or when a goal outcome is achieved. In this scenario, the new plan goes into effect after the individual’s semi-annual (or annual) team meeting.

There are five key areas that are important in shaping an individual’s quality of life. Services are evaluated based upon how they enable the individual to:

1. Share ordinary places
2. Make choices
3. Develop abilities
4. Be treated with respect and have a valued social role
5. Grow in relationships

Person-centered services offer an alternative to traditional methods, placing the individual at the center of the decision-making. The process focuses on discovering the person’s gifts, skills and capabilities, and on listening and conversing about what is really important to the person. The person-centered approach is based on the values of human rights, independence, and social inclusion. The services are designed to enable individuals to direct their own services and support in a personalized, empowering way.

It is essential that Employment Links’ staff make a commitment to strive for person-centeredness in all of their activities with Individuals. However, it is equally important that Employment Links’ staff understand what the person’s CSSP states and to follow that plan without deviation, since the Individual and their team created this plan based on what the Individual has decided he or she wants to achieve.

Person-centered thinking challenges us all to actively listen to the people we serve and to those who know them best in order to understand what they want for their lives. This enables us to help support the individual in ways that will increase their success at living as independently as they are able, and allows them to contribute to the extent that they choose to community life, including finding and maintaining paid community-based jobs, if that is what they choose.

Below are a pair of question sets that provide a general idea of the focus of person-centered planning conversations. These are samples provided by the Minnesota Department of Human Services. The full sample document is available here (link opens in new tab).