1. Britt Bassoni Minnesota DHS – Aging and Adult Services Division
Making Person-Centered Planning the Center of Community Development Action for Older Adults
Britt Bassoni
Minnesota DHS – Aging and Adult Services Division

2. The Problems Home and Community-Based Service Development:
Frequently doesn’t involve consumers of services
Often fails to recognize the individuals are unique and aren’t defined by their age or diagnosis
Usually is lineal and boundary-defined
Always struggles with issues of funding, sustainability, regulation, and liability
May not always share the same priorities as consumers of services
Left with retrofitting what currently already exists or is already there.
Developers and human and social services planners are getting better at seeking input and consumer participation in the work of service and support planning and development, but the process can be time-consuming, labor intensive, and typically makes assumptions about how inclusive and representative the consumer involvement really is.
Developers and human and social services planners generally work in very clearly defined boundaries - - geographically, in terms of their service populations, with specific eligibility, and at a single point in time. In other words, development and planning is challenged to account for the unique, variant, and evolving nature of human beings and their needs.
While service consumers know best what it is they need and desire in terms of services and support to help maintain their independence, they can be unaware of the funding, staffing, and regulation issues that can pose real challenges for service development and planning.
These problems, however, don’t have to define the terms or the process of engagement and collaboration going forward.

3. The Goals New thinking and person-centered approaches can:
Better involve consumers of services
Help us see consumers as dynamic contributors and participants in their communities
Assist us in recognizing the complexities and challenges of planning for a lifetime
Allows us to better utilize and allocate scarce and valuable resources
Foster clear and frank discussions about vision and priorities, and the way to get to where we want to go
Development, planning, and design of services and supports for older adults and individuals with disabilities can help us develop and design communities that are positive and supportive of all people children, students, young adults, working parents, and professionals such as emergency responders. This sort of planning and development makes our communities healthier, stronger, and more resilient in the face of on-going changes.
Person-centered approaches of development and capacity building, as well as consumer direction in service procurement and delivery, are ways to foster inclusiveness, but even more, promote and support diversity and equality.
Anyone who has ever attempted to put together and live within a budget - - even for a few months - - is aware of the challenges and difficulties encountered in trying to stick to a plan. Unforeseen circumstances, even for the most predictable of lives, is seldom predictable at all! Planning for an uncertain future, for dynamic and ever-changing individual, is an exercise in adaptability and flexibility. When change can happen quickly, we need to develop services and supports that can change and respond quickly as well.
Communities seldom have the funds they need to accomplish all they would like to and think that is needed, but they almost always have the talent and vision to come up with a plan that is better than the one they developed yesterday Today they are smarter and can see more of the future and what did and didn’t work than they could the day before!
At its core, community development is an exercise in communication, compromise, commitment, and collective consciousness. A community in which everyone can clearly articulate a vision of tomorrow in which they have a role and play a part in achieving that vision is a community well-served in its planning and development efforts.

4. The Challenges How can we:
Engage older adults and a more diverse cross-section of our community in person-centered planning and planning for a lifetime?
Translate and execute what we hear into meaningful and purpose-driven development activities?
Build the abilities and possibilities of change and growth into the partnerships and models we develop?
How do we engage nor convince others of the importance of this sort of development and these sorts of development-related activities and undertakings? How do we engage currently disengaged individuals to participate in this, and how do we engage with essential partners such as grocery stores, barber shops, hardware stores, insurance brokers, real estate agents, and schools? How do we even begin identifying who should be involved given the difference in individual consumers and their needs and desires?

5. The Results Stronger, more vibrant, and more inclusive communities
Better and broader-based services and supports
Greater consumer satisfaction and quality of life
More efficient use of scarce funds - - private and public
Improved communication between and utilization of existing community services and resources

6. The Questions
What can you do in a personal or professional capacity to make person-centered planning and development a part of how you think, how you help problem-solve with clients, and how you develop programs and services?

7. The Questions
Relationship mapping is used in person-centered planning, to articulate personal networks and develop care plans, but can the same technique be used to articulate community networks and how they might work together in service of individuals within that community?
What would your relationship map look like?

8. The Questions
In your agency, business, or community how can you engage relevant participants and partners in individualized person-centered planning, and then on a community level, in person-centered planning and development?
How would you “sell” your ideas, and how would your message differ as you engaged a barber shop, local law enforcement, and then a home delivered meals program?

9. The Questions
Think about all of the businesses and services you access currently in your life. Now project into the future to a point in time where you would need to access many of those same businesses and services and what you would tell them about how you expected to be accommodated and treated? Would your expectations then be any different than they are today?

10. The Questions
In your own life, or in your own agency or larger community, who gets left out - - or opts out - - of planning and services development, and why?
What does their absence cost you, your organization, or community?

11. Summary
Person-centered, inclusive, and participant-driven community services development won’t happen if you and those you both know and don’t know can’t or chose not to be a part of the process.
Knowing it is difficult doesn’t earn anyone a pass, and wishing it to be so, won’t make it happen on its own. It will take real work.