1. Enhanced Communication: Enabling technology, such as communication apps and assistive devices, can improve communication between service providers and individuals with intellectual disabilities. This can help in understanding their needs, preferences, and goals, leading to more personalized and effective support.

2. Streamlined Documentation and Reporting: Technology solutions like electronic health records (EHR) and case management systems can automate and streamline documentation and reporting processes. This reduces administrative burden, improves accuracy, and allows providers to focus more on delivering quality care.

3. Remote Support and Telehealth: Enabling technology enables remote support and telehealth services, allowing providers to reach individuals in remote areas or those who have difficulty accessing in-person services. This expands the reach of services and improves convenience for individuals and their families.

4. Personalized Care Plans: Technology can facilitate the creation and management of personalized care plans for individuals with intellectual disabilities. Providers can leverage data and analytics to develop customized (and proactive) care plans and tailored interventions. They can continually track progress, and make data-driven decisions to improve outcomes.

5. Training and Professional Development: Technology-based training platforms and e-learning tools can enhance the skills and knowledge of service providers. This ensures they stay up-to-date with the latest research, best practices, and interventions, ultimately improving the quality of care provided.

6. Data Analysis and Insights: Enabling technology allows providers to collect and analyze data on various aspects of their service delivery. This can help identify trends, measure outcomes, and make data-driven improvements to service models which in turn, results in better outcomes for individuals served.

Overall, enabling technology empowers providers of intellectual disability services to deliver more personalized, efficient, and effective care, ultimately improving the value they provide to individuals and their families.

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So how can vision boards benefit the person-centered planning process? Simply put, they assist in:

Establishing Goals
Vision boards can provide a starting point for developing your initial person-centered plan. For those who already have their goals in mind – creating a vision board provides a motivation tool. For those who are unsure – vision boards help define where they want to see themselves in the future.

Clarifying Goals
Beginning the process by creating these bigger picture endings makes it easier for support staff to be able to back-step to create all necessary steps needed to make the end visions a reality. For the individual served, it reduces the “overwhelm” that the end-goal may create by clarifying the short- , mid-, and long-term steps necessary to achieve the goals on their vision board.

Focusing on Goals
Let’s face it, life gets hectic. Often times, we get buried in managing pop-up responsibilities and forget our ultimate goals. (The things that, when accomplished, actually give us intrinsic value and meaning.) For the person served, having a vision board in plain sight each day helps them align their daily to-do’s and activities to reach the important goals.

Achieving Goals
Positive feelings and reward… if there weren’t any, what would be the driving factor to accomplish things? Achieving goals and feeling those good “feels” are reinforcement for continuing the goal-setting process and growing and evolving as human beings.

Maintaining Goals
Again, life can sometimes interfere with our goals. Vision boards help people get back on the track and align ourselves with the goal’s action plan.

Flourish, CreateAbility’s person-centered planning app is a modern vision board app that the individuals served can carry in their pockets each day. In addition to grouping their pictures, it talks to them, and reminds them about the things they need to accomplish each day towards these goals. For the support staff, it provides the foundation to establish, clarify, and help their client’s focus and achieve goals with the added benefit of providing documentation needed for annual reporting.

If you are looking for a way to simplify your person-centered planning process, please reach out to us at info@createabilityinc.com.

The post What is a “Vision Board” and What Role Can It Play in the Person-Centered Planning Process? appeared first on CreateAbility Inc.

When the Flourish person-centered care planning app was created, our team considered both critical factors for goal-achieving success in the development of the app:

Those using Flourish use it to convey what motivates them, what they like, what their goals are and how to best work with them, increasing the awareness of their support system and hence, their odds for success. It keeps their goals in the form of a vision board they carry in their pocket each day to encourage them – but stays focused on more succinct steps needed to achieve their goals so they don’t become overwhelmed. 

Setting short, mid, and long-term goals as “stairsteps” to the end-goal makes success more realistic and achievable. It keeps individuals in line with what they need to do each-and-every day to get to the bigger goal, tomorrow. Involving others (support staff) increases accountability as they track progress toward each step of achievement. Finally, noting and celebrating the milestones along the way makes the journey much less taxing for everyone involved.

You see, Flourish includes both important ingredients in the secret sauce of goal-achieving success: 

Positive psychology:  What makes me…ME? What are my goals and why?  How am I going to get there? (And working together with support staff in clearly defining these factors.)

Tracking:  Breaking goals into more succinct steps, tracking and viewing progress, celebrating accomplishments, and experiencing the intrinsic value of achieving intended goals.

Better yet, the outcomes are just as positive for support staff members; improving staff/client relationships, streamlining person-centered planning, and affording them the ability to pull necessary documentation for annual reporting.

If you want to talk about ways to improve person-centered care plans for the people you serve, don’t hesitate to reach out to me/us!

If you want to talk about weight loss, you’ll have to hold your horses – I’m still working on it!

Until next time,

Kerri

The post Two Key Ingredients in Successful Person-Centered Care Plans appeared first on CreateAbility Inc.

Antiquated, printed copies of care plans on are not mobile - and are not as easily changed as the person-served accomplishes their goals. Assistive technology grants individuals with intellectual disabilities the opportunity to feel more a part of the planning process as they carry it with them to help keep them on track.   

2.) Assistive Technology provides accessibility.   

Mobile technology opens the door for text-to speech; allowing  individuals who are print-challenged to “play” each section of  their plan. The user experience can be enhanced by enabling the person-served to independently select the specific section of interest that they wish to listen to. This helps prevent overwhelming them with too much information at once.   

3.) Assistive Technology provides succinct, actionable steps to a customized care plan.   

Care plans should not be approached as a one-size-fits-all solution and manual processes like creating written instructions, manuals, and binders take time and energy that could be spent elsewhere. Assistive technology provides a more malleable platform to establish and manage care plans that are more customized to the individual.    

4.) Assistive Technology is remotely supportable by Care Providers and Job Coaches.   

Assistive technology has afforded Care Providers with the ability to communicate with clients and monitor setbacks and progress in their person-centered care plan ANY TIME and ANYWHERE.  This is a big advancement in the quality of care that Care Providers and Vocational Rehabilitation agencies/organizations can offer their clients. It has equipped them with virtual “eyes” inside the homes of the people they serve without being intrusive to their lives.   

If you are looking to simplify and/or increase the efficacy of your person-centered plans with clients, we encourage you to check out FLOURISH, CreateAbility’s new app that helps you establish, manage goals…and helps your clients achieve them!

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