Promoting Personalisation

Personalisation is all about treating each person as an individual with unique needs, preferences and backgrounds, and it’s an essential aspect of high-quality health and social care.
It begins with comprehensive assessments that recognise the totality of an individual’s health and social care needs. This usually includes physical health, mental health, cultural or linguistic needs, preferences around daily routines and activities, and hopes for the future.
Good care planning takes these insights into account to create tailored care plans that suit each individual. Personalisation may involve customising aspects of care like meal times, activities, therapies, and communication methods.
Empowering individuals is another key component of personalisation. People should be enabled to make their own decisions about their care as much as possible, even if they need support to do so. This can involve offering choices, providing clear information, supporting people to express their views, and ensuring that decisions are made in the person’s best interest.
Coordinating care across multiple services is also a key aspect of personalisation. This might involve liaising with different health professionals, social workers, family members, and any other people who are involved in supporting the individual. Care coordination helps to ensure that people receive seamless, efficient, and consistent care.
Effective communication is at the heart of personalisation. It’s essential to communicate often and openly with the individuals you’re supporting, and to adjust your communication style to suit them. Some people might prefer verbal communication, while others might need visual aids, sign language, or a particular language.
Continuous evaluation and adjustment is an integral part of promoting personalisation. As people’s needs and preferences change over time, their care plans should change with them. This means regularly reassessing the person’s needs, gathering their feedback on their care, and making necessary adjustments to their care plan.
Remember, promoting personalisation isn’t just the right thing to do - it’s a requirement of professional practise. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) in England, for example, assesses care providers based on whether they deliver person-centred care. This means treating people with dignity and respect, providing personalised care, and ensuring people’s needs and preferences are met.