click to download 'Shifting Authority' PDF

What is Shifting Authority?

How can the shifting of authority be achieved?

What might SHIFTING AUTHORITY look like?

A continuum for self- evaluation

Developing Effective Practice: Providing Choice

Developing Effective Practice: Person-Driven Services

Developing Effective Practice: Linking Personal and Strategic Planning

Resources and Links

What is Shifting Authority?

Shifting Authority is changing OUR focus from the provider dictating what service or programme a person will receive, to the person saying what they want and the provider making it happen.

• Shifting authority is a core element of ‘Enabling’

• There is a strong link between trusting relationships and shifting authority

• Shifting authority enables processes such as personal planning to be person driven and strategic planning, decision making and problem solving to be shared

• Shifting authority requires a clear link between input and action

• Shifting authority enables self determination about “real” things Shifting authority is NOT consultation after a decision is made.

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How can the shifting of authority be achieved?

1. By acknowledging and understanding benefits of person driven services

• Service provider moves from being all things to all people towards a focus on individuals, their natural supports and community supports

• Belief in the benefits of cooperation and collaboration underpin all actions and decisions
  

2. By providing choices for those who have been excluded

• Providing opportunities for learning about choice making

• Providing opportunities for making choices

• By understanding that making mistakes is part of the learning process in making choices

• Providing opportunities to learn how to question

• Providing opportunities to learn how to deal constructively with conflict

  
  

3. By encouraging involvement in strategic decision making and planning

• Ensuring there are frequent meetings and/or discussions about relevant issues in ways that are understandable and meaningful to all involved

• Training and information in understandable formats

• Clarity of staff role (to facilitate - not to do for you)

  
  

4. By reviewing the effect of Power Sharing

• Level of participation of disabled people in a range of activities, issues and events

• Disabled people’s personal planning information forms the basis for the organisation’s planning and development

  
  

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What might SHIFTING AUTHORITY look like?

For the individual:

• Understanding how things work and how to get things done
  

• Having a method to communicate ideas, needs, etc
  

• Feeling safe about making complains or raising a concern

• Feeling supported to try something and learn from it if it does not work out (learning from mistakes)

• Being valued and respected by staff, family and friends

• Being part of the give and take – reciprocity

• Sharing roles and responsibilities in meaningful ways

• Being enabled and supported to take leadership roles

For family/whanau:

• Being asked for information, ideas and opinions

• Being enabled to participate and contribute

• Having ideas and options respected

• Input into organisational planning and review

For the service provider:

• Having transparent, easy to understand processes for decision making and planning

• Sharing roles and responsibilities

• Challenging and changing current hierarchies

• sharing leadership

For the community:

• Having ways to interact with and contribute to the service and the people who use it

• The service users are supported to take leadership roles in the community

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A Continuum of self-evaluation

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Developing Effective Practice: Providing Choice

There is a range of ways that services can provide people with choice. Many services offer a mix of these options. (See also Innovative Resource Allocation )

1. The Clubhouse Model

• Traditionally this model involves people being paid up members of the organisation who can offer suggestions for what the service can provide once or twice a year.

• Having ways to interact with and contribute to the service and people who use it
  

• An adaption of the model is to generate activity options based on what the people using the service want. The service will consult with people and then create a weekly programme from which people can choose the activity options they prefer. These options often run for a school term but may occur for longer periods of time. The aim is to offer more relevant choices based on what the majority prefer. It shifts authority away from only providing service driven choices.

2. Small Group Activities

• Give people the opportunity to choose what they want to do, either alone or with one or two other people, at least once every two to three weeks.

• This process gives key workers time to work on personal plan goals, or assist people to explore options in the local community.
  

3. The Brokerage Model

• Brokerage involves a key worker working with one person at a time and supporting them to achieve their goals.

• The service does not necessarily provide either direct support or activities. The aim is to assist the person to find individualised, community-based solutions.

• The person is active in taking responsibility for achieving their goals.

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Developing Effective Practice: Person-Driven Services

• Person-driven practice is a whole service approach.

• It assumes that the service is there to offer support and guidance but not necessarily provide the answers.

• It involves helping a person identify their goals and the natural supports and resources available to them. The person is an active participant rather than a passive recipient.

• The main role of the service is to implement systems and processes to help this happen.

• Strategic planning and service development are based on what people want, and what the service needs to provide in order for them to achieve their goals.

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Developing Effective Practice: Linking Personal and Strategic Planning

• Frequently review personal plans from a strategic, or ‘big picture’ perspective.

• Look for trends, and identify if a shift in focus is required to meet existing and developing trends.

• Identify what the service needs to have in place to support people to achieve their goals and allocate resources accordingly.

• Give people the opportunity to be involved in discussions about the organisation, e.g. group meetings, brainstorming sessions, Board representation.

• Involve people and their families/whanau in regular service effectiveness reviews.

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Resources and Links

Leader's Resource Kit: Instructor's manual, CD with PowerPoint presentations, articles, music sampler

Learning Journey Booklet: supports action-learning about relationship building, planning with people in a person-centered way, supporting choice, & building community inclusion. (Learning Journey workbooks go with the book.)

www.interactionz.org.nz
Interactionz is a disability support organisation in Hamilton, which is actively working to develop person-driven services.

Social Role Valorisation
Social Role Valorisation is a theory based on the premise that people in marginalised groups are at risk of being negatively treated by society. SRV suggests that to overcome this it is most useful to seek positive valued roles for the devalued people and groups. It suggests that enhancing competency and image (of the person and their surroundings) will result in positive roles being made a possibility for devalued people.

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