Person-Centered Supports
All people have the right to live, love, work, play, and pursue their dreams in their community. People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (I/DD or “participant(s)”) have the same universal wants, needs, desires, and values as everyone else, including love, companionship and self-fulfillment.
Every person will express their values in different ways, but each person’s values should be recognized and honored.
Person-centered supports focuses on a participant’s right to choice, direction, and control. It is the person’s right to identify and pursue what is important to them. Self-determination generally means that people have authority over their lives. It means that people have control of the resources needed for their support, as well as responsibility for their decisions and actions.
Everyone wants a good life. Each person will define their good life in their own, unique way. In this course, you will start thinking about what it means to have a good life. You will do many activities in this course to reflect on what a good life means to you. The person-centered tools and activities introduced in this course will help you identify your strengths, the things important to you, and how to best support you. You will practice using these tools on yourself to learn how to use these tools with others. As you become comfortable using person-centered tools, you will develop the skills necessary to support someone to reach their good life.
Objectives
At the end of the lesson, you will be able to:
- Identify the principles of person-centered supports.
- Describe self-determination as a concept and how applying the concepts of self-determination can support a participant to live their good life.
- Demonstrate proper use of person-first language.
At the end of the lesson, you will be able to:
- Define “trajectory” and describe how it can be used to identify your vision of a good life.
- Practice and understand the purposes of the Person-Centered Worksheets: Life Trajectory, Important To – Important For, One Page Profile, Good Day – Bad Day, What’s Working – What’s Not Working, and 4+1.
- Distinguish between “Important To” and “Important For.”
Course Workbook and Toolkit
🖨 Print the Person-Centered Supports Workbook (PDF), or print the full Visions Workbooks (PDF).
Use the workbook to take notes, prepare for quizzes, and keep as a reference for the future.
🖨 Print two copies of the Person-Centered Supports Toolkit.
