Involving clients in their own support

INVOLVING CLIENTS IN THEIR OWN SUPPORT

Involving clients in their own support is key to client involvement; the approach should underpin the values and aims of your service as it places clients’ choices, growth and development at the centre of all the work you do. This means helping people to do things for themselves and enabling people to live as independently as possible.

This approach to support is often referred to as a person centred approach and ties in with the new personalisation agenda, which gives more choices to client about how they receive support. It can be frustrating trying to get chaotic clients to take responsibility, especially under time pressures. It may take longer to show a client how to fill in a benefit form, but simply doing things for people doesn’t help people them in the long run.

“I don’t do anything by myself. It’s pathetic. I find it really embarrassing and I usually say I can’t be bothered and it gets me off the hook rather than going into long explanations, but I am bothered and I don’t want these feelings over my head” Client comment

A PErSON CENTRED APPROACH

A person centred approach to support originally comes from psychologist Carl Rodgers’ counseling model that builds on the theory that clients are the best authority on their experiences and potential needs. The theory suggests that clients are capable of fulfilling their potential if the right supportive environment is created. The model recognises, however, that achieving potential requires favourable conditions and that under adverse conditions, individuals may well not grow and develop in the ways that they otherwise could.

PERSONALISATION

Personalisation is the new approach in social care and places clients at the centre of their own care and support. Personalisation is the underlying principle of effective client involvement as it empowers clients to take responsibility for their lives, learn, develop and achieve their potential. Please visit the personalisation pages to find out more

SOME THINGS TO CONSIDER

In the homelessness sector the support we deliver can vary hugely as we work with such a variety of support needs and settings, but here are a few tips to get you thinking:

  • Encourage clients to use online self assessment tools such as BlueSalmon
  • Work together with clients to solve the problem - don’t always just fill in someone’s benefit form for them; find out why they can’t and develop an action plan that explores why: do they need support with literacy, are they visually impaired, are they nervous about poor hand writing and spelling mistakes?
  • Divide tasks up – suggest that you will phone the gas, if they phone the electric company
  • Hand over  decision making - let people choose their appointment times, where appointments are held - would the client rather go to a cafe than sit in office, would they rather have an informal chat or use paper work?
  • Refer people to budgeting, life skills, cookery classes that may up-skill people to become independent
  • Encourage clients to access staff training – clients may be able to make personal changes, if they understand how change happens
  • Always involve clients in their support and action plans- let people know what you intend to do and why

For information on relevant training - please visit our training to move people forward webpage