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Effective delivery of person-centered home and community-based services (HCBS) is linked to a handful of key competencies of those providing the services, according to a new article published in the Journal of Applied Gerontology led by researchers in the Center for Rehabilitation Outcomes Research at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab.
The researchers performed a systematic review of published articles to identify person-centered competencies among direct support professionals and case managers related to respecting and incorporating participants’ cultural preferences and interests into their care, ensuring that participants have choice and control, empowering participants in the planning process and adjusting plans as requested.
Person-centered HCBS are delivered with a focus on helping the participant achieve their goals based on their unique choices and interests. Person-centered planning takes into account the physical, social, emotional and spiritual needs of the participant with respect to their values, culture, family situation, lifestyle and preferences. A person-centered plan is created collaboratively with the person receiving the supports.
Together with colleagues from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Drexel University, and National Tsing-Hua University in Taiwan, the researchers identified 43 articles based on their search criteria, and using the person-centered competencies framework developed by the National Center on Advancing Person-Centered Practices and Systems (NCAPPS), they identified seven competencies that were most strongly related to person-centered planning and delivery of HCBS. The most frequently-mentioned competencies related to culturally-informed practice, cultivating connections and promoting rights, choice and control.
“We found that the most frequently mentioned competencies were related to the strengths-based, culturally-informed, whole person-focused NCAPPS domain,” says Niveda Tennety, project coordinator in the Rehabilitation and Research Training Center on HCBS in the Center for Rehabilitation Outcomes Research and a co-author on the paper. “These competencies included centering the participants’ spiritual needs in care, personalizing care, being flexible in meeting the individual’s needs and learning about marginalized populations and HCBS users’ rights.”
“We’re learning that it is really important for training in person-centered planning to emphasize the individuality of the people who receive HCBS, and that much more needs to be done on the relationship between training in person-centered planning and outcomes of HCBS users,” says Tennety. “This being said, it is important to recognize that the direct service professional workforce faces many challenges such as low wages and lack of opportunities for career growth in addition to a lack of standardized training options for person-centered planning.”
This research was funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (grant 90RTGE0004).