March 4, 2025
| As we go into a period where the organization will need maximum flexibility, it feels worth considering how person-centered practices look in the mirror. An organization that wants to maximize the person-centeredness of the support it provides individuals needs a structure and core values that permit that flexibility. It also gets advantages to its infrastructure. A person-centered program of care is influenced more by the individual, their care team and the circle of support than it is by some portly, verbose old Executive Director and his court. It has cells (like a terrorist network or a wine cork.) It can do more with less management. We are, in many ways, early into our growth as a person-centered agency, closer to where we started (proudly, already flexible and highly individualized) than we are from the destiny we’re chasing. In the last ten years, our budget has grown nearly fivefold. The number of people we serve has about doubled and the number of employees we have has doubled. But the number of permanent administrative positions has grown from three to three and a half. The number of Facilitators, our case managers, has only grown 50%. But we serve more people with intensive needs more flexibly and we can do that because of how the organization benefits from the self-determination of our clients and care-teams. |