At Lifestyle Homecare, we care for a wide array of clients with our residential and in-home services, including older adults and end of life care, disabled people and those seeking reablement, and people with learning disabilities or mental health conditions. This requires us to have a flexible approach to our services, as our clients each have unique challenges that need bespoke strategies to tackle. This is why at Lifestyle Homecare we only employ person-centred care.
Person-centric care is, in short, health or social care services that are geared around the individual. In person-centred care services, care professionals will collaborate with their clients or patients to deliver tailor-made care programmes, encourage independence and self-awareness, and allow them to contribute to and make informed decisions about their healthcare. Person-centred care plans and administers services with or alongside the people who require care, rather than doing it for or to them.
The Four Principles of Person-Centred Care
The Health Foundation, an independent charity dedicated to improving UK healthcare services, defines four principles that are essential to person-centred care services. These Four Principles consist of:
- Affording people dignity, compassion, and respect.
- Offering coordinated care, support, or treatment.
- Offering personalised care, support, or treatment.
- Supporting people to recognise and develop their own strengths and abilities to enable them to live an independent and fulfilling life.
According to these principles, person-centred care must be personalised, co-ordinated, and enabling for the client, and they must be treated with dignity, compassion, and respect.
Why is Person Centred Care Important?
Given the current economic climate, and the strain the NHS has been under in recent years, there are those who may claim that person-centred care is a luxury, or at least that it should be a lower priority than financial aspects of care. To those people we say, is it acceptable for healthcare to treat people without dignity, compassion, or respect? To maintain dependency on care rather than foster independence, raising the cost of care and lengthening its duration?
Person-centred care is vital to ensure that every patient or customer is treated correctly, is diagnosed holistically, and is helped to gain independence from care services where possible. For more information on our home care services or jobs in home care, get in touch with Lifestyle Homecare today.
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