Progress for Providers – Checking your progress in using person-centred approaches (New Zealand edition) is a self-assessment tool for managers to use individually and with their teams.

The new models and frameworks in New Zealand, in demonstration or design stage – including Living My Life (ACC DSS); Let’s get real: Disability (Te Pou); New Model for Supporting Disabled People: Choices in Community Living, Local Area Coordination, Enhanced Individualised Funding, and Supported Self-Assessment; the Putting People First Quality Review (MoH DSS); and Enabling Good Lives – heralds a significant shift in the provision of disability support. People with disabilities will have increased power to exercise choice and control in the pursuit of their goals and in the planning and delivery of supports. Progress for Providers assists in this process of change. Progress for Providers accommodates Maori concepts of health and wellbeing.

The concept of control and choice in everyday life is consistent with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006). Upholding the human rights of people with disabilities is at the core of the change, and embedding a rights-based approach for all practices within the sector is critical.

Using person-centred approaches helps people with disabilities to have more choice and control in their lives, and helps staff to provide the best support they can in ways that reflect what is important to the person in question. Working in this way is not necessarily about doing more, but doing things differently.