This month's blog is brought to you by Brian Sullivan, a supported living worker in Blenheim, New Zealand, where he works for an agency called Neighbourhood Connections - http://www.tautoko.org.nz/neighbourhood-connections Brian also made a person centred thinking course first for me in bringing his dog Theo along to training (pictured). These are his (Brian's, not the dog's) reflections on person centred thinking training and how he has begun to apply his learning.

I thought the day of PCT (what does that mean?) training would be just like many others I'd been to where the speaker has a pre-set list of slides/overheads/power points which would flash before my eyes in a structured format and be accompanied by a routine spiel, at the end of which someone would do thanks and we would quietly slip away to catchup with our broken day.

Deb Watson changed all that.

The PCT training folder didn't disappear into the bottom drawer for referring to later (yeah right), and the way I thought about my job changed up a gear, (another first) so how did she do it?

By getting me to think about why I liked weetbix, or more precisely what I did every morning as I started my day.

Apparently we're all different.

Some people don't eat weetbix. Imagine that. Some people don't even have breakfast at all!

Following Deb's example of her morning routines I had filled in a form which was headed up 'Brian's Morning Routine' and had then written down a minute by minute list of what I did every morning to start my day.

Just the first hour of my routine.

It covered the basics like shaving, listening to the radio, and of course eating my weetbix.

We all wrote this personal list of our start-up routines and then we swapped them for someone else's in the room and tried to imagine what it would be like to follow their routine.

But most of the others in the room were ladies and the new routine that I got had some very different activities on it.

Like putting my hair up (I don't have enough) going for a run along the river (I hate getting puffed) showering afterwards (I shower at night) but worst of all eating fruit for breakfast.

No weetbix!

You can imagine what the lady I swapped with thought of having to start her day with a shave.

This exercise was one of many tools that we used during the day to change our approach towards the people that we support by making us think what it'd be like if we were in their place.

Other tools were called Learning Logs and what's working/ what's not working (was there a Doughnut too?) but the one that has turned out the most useful to me was called a One Page Profile.

It was broken into several parts on the page and covered all the good things about the person being supported, what was really important to that person and how best to give support.

Today I submitted a One Page Profile for a person who I have supported for many years but who is now needing much more integrated support than I can deliver so a clutch of other agencies are becoming involved.

This will involve sharing what I know of this person's details amongst many other personnel all of whom will need to know the specific and personal characteristics of the person in order to deliver the best support that they can.

The One Page Profile ensures that everyone is working towards the same outcome and the winner is the person, not just the agency or the system.

We will all become Person Centred Thinkers.