Person-centred care

Being person-centred is about focusing care on the needs of individual. Ensuring that people's preferences, needs and values guide clinical decisions, and providing care that is respectful of and responsive to them.

Health and wellbeing outcomes need to be co-produced by individuals and members of the workforce working in partnership, with evidence suggesting that this provides better patient outcomes and costs less to health and care systems.

Person-centred care framework

Person-centred approaches is a core skills education and training framework that articulates what it means to be person-centred and how to develop and support the workforce to work in this way.

Developed in partnership with Skills for Health and Skills for Care, the Framework aims to distil best practice and to set out core, transferable behaviours, knowledge and skills. It is applicable across services and sectors (e.g. health, social care, local authorities and housing) and across different types of organisations (e.g. public, private and not for profit).

Person-centred Approaches underpins existing dementia, learning disabilities, mental health and end of life care core skills frameworks.

Working together

Bringing together the mental health, dementia, learning disability, and end of life careprogrammes we’re identifying the basic competencies and behaviours required by everybody who’s involved in ensuring patients and service users stay engaged, healthy and in control of their own choices.

We’re working with cross-system partners to build an understanding of the roles and responsibilities of practitioners and citizens and how they work in partnership to enable individuals to manage their own health and wellbeing with the support they need and choose.

The work will model the six principles produced by the People and Communities Board, alongside the New Models of Care Vanguard Sites, for changing the way that health and care relate to people and communities. The six principles require that:

• care and support is person-centered: personalised, coordinated, and empowering
• services are created in partnership with citizens and communities
• focus is on equality and narrowing inequalities
• carers are identified, supported and involved
• voluntary, community and social enterprise and housing sectors are involved as key partners and enablers
• volunteering and social action are recognised as key enablers.

These ‘six principles’ set out the basis of good person-centred, community focused health and care.

Members of the Health Education England’s Patient Advisory Forum (PAF):

We hope to be valued for what and who we are, no matter how broken we may seem from the outside. We want to be offered choice to maintain our independence, dignity and sense of self worth. The challenge for the NHS and all health and care providers is to develop a mindset, which will preserve our freedom to help ourselves in true partnership.