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8.1. Important to and important for
What is important to a person includes what people are expressing with their words and their behaviours. In situations where there is inconsistency between what people say and what they do, a person-centred thinking approach relies on behaviour as being more likely to reflect what is important to a person. This is particularly the case when people are saying what they think others want to hear.
What is important for people includes those things that we need to keep in mind for people: what others see as important in order to help the person be healthy, safe and a valued member of their community.
One way of doing this is to list those things that are important to the person in relation to the complaint on one side, and those that are important for on the other. It is then possible to compare the two columns and see how a balance between the two aspects can best be achieved in responding to the complaint. This may also cause you to identify other things that you need to know in order to be able to respond to the complaint with a clear focus on the person using the service.
John’s story
John did not like staying at home during the day as he became easily bored, and would tend to self injure. However, his parents were worried that he might be at risk out in the community. The accommodation service provider had not prevented John from leaving the house to go for a walk, and on a couple of occasions he had been returned home by the police.
John’s parents complained to the disability service that they were failing to ensure John’s safety in the community. In this situation it is clearly important to John to be able to come and go freely from his home at his own choosing. It is important for John to be able to be as safe as possible in the community and not self injure, as well as being able to return home.
As a result of the complaint the provider was able to work with John and his parents’ concerns. They developed a strategy that would enable John to freely go out into the community and they would work with John on always taking a pack with him that had food, water and his address details, as well as a mobile phone that had programmed numbers which he could ring if he got lost. Whilst the parents were still somewhat anxious about this, it was trialled over an extended period and worked.
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