What does a “person-centred approach” mean?

Using a person centred approach involves a continual process of listening, exploring, empowering and learning what is important to an individual. A person centred approach to intervention involves collaboration with the individual and the people closest to them to determine their goals and the support they require to reach their goals. Working in a person centred way ensures that those supporting an individual remain focused on the individual and who they are. This allows people to have positive control and active involvement in their own lives.

What does a “strengths-based approach” mean?

A strengths based approach to assessment and intervention involves a commitment to collaborate with individuals and their carers to discover individual and support system strengths. Every individual has strengths, preferences, motivations and life experience, although sometimes these can go unrecognised. When using a strengths based approach, individual’s and their families and carers are engaged and empowered as active participants in the process.

What is a trans-disciplinary approach?

A trans-disciplinary approach involves a range of involved people, including family members, working together to better understand and more effectively and efficiently address the needs of the client (child, adult and family). Through collaboration, consensus building, regular and open communication, and expanding roles across discipline boundaries, this approach allows and enables team members to plan and provide integrated services for children, adults and families.

What is an individual’s “support system”?

An individual’s support system refers to the person’s:

• Support network of people (e.g. parents, carers, teachers, professionals, etc)
• Environments (e.g. home, school, work, community, etc)

What is “active support”?

Everybody deserves the right to participate and contribute in their day-to-day life, yet people with disabilities spend a lot of their time with very little to do. The active support approach involves developing the individual’s support system in order to promote and increase their day-to-day participation, so that they too can enjoy lives as full and rewarding as anyone else. Active support aims to improve the individual’s quality of life, including:

• Increased participation to make a meaningful contribution (regardless of their disability);
• Increased daily occupation (planning for a full & fulfilling day)
• Improved sense of belonging (via increased social engagement);
• Increased sense of purpose and self-worth;
• Improved self-esteem;

What is a “developmental approach”?

A developmental approach involves building an understanding of the individual and their current abilities in the context of their developmental history. This requires investigation into the individual’s history and how it has shaped their development; and this helps to inform our understanding of their current presentation.

This knowledge facilitates the formulation of an approach to communication intervention that is supportive, pitched at the individual’s current level of ability and sensitive to the individual’s unique learning needs.

A developmental approach aims to promote a good match between the person’s developmental needs, their environment and their relationship-based experiences in order to meet their goals for communication.