Person-centered thinking tools have an important role to play. They provide for rigor in a complicated conversation and they produce relatively simple documents that are much more supportive of training than longer documents. They can also be helpful for inspiring caregivers, Facilitators. family members and Executive Directors to think more deeply about who we are serving and how to serve them better.
What they don’t do is replace respect, curiosity, insight and imagination that can arise as assets every day. Practitioners of person-centered services should no more fetishize the tools than they should the program design.
You know our efforts at supporting a person-centered culture are working when people look for a tool that will clarify a caregiver’s insight. Choosing a tool to drag out an insight can be a necessary second-best.