What is pcas?
Person Centred Active Support (PCAS) encourages us to customise support to each individual to ensure a person’s needs are met.
As practitioners of PCAS, Help Disability Care looks at applying the four fundamental principles:
1. Every moment has potential - Any given moment holds potential for a person to be engaged in meaningful activities and relationships.
2. Maximise choice and control - Supporting people to maximise choice in all aspects of their lives.
3. Little and often - Recognising that a person may like to participate in part of an activity, rather than all, and they can take a break and come back to it.
4. Graded assistance - Providing the right type of support to enable a person to successfully engage in meaningful activities and relationships.
supporting the research
Thank you to the families and participants who have already made a valuable contribution to the important work done so far. Involvement in the first round of observations helped our Active Support Practice Champions identify key target areas to develop additional skills. This will assist in a higher quality of support to people with disability.
If you would like to be part of our next round of research observations, please express your interest by clicking on the 'Register Now' button.
Learn more about HELP's partnership with LaTrobe university
Our formal partnership is focussed on two key areas:
- The PCAS training component delivered by LaTrobe University to all frontline Help Disability Care staff (including theoretical classroom teaching and on-the-job supervision and mentoring).
- The 5-year research initiative of the partnership to underpin a successful, sustainable approach to implementation of the model across HELP.
As part of collecting baseline data, LaTrobe is making initial observations and will then return to Help Disability Care in Queensland on a regular basis, further complementing the ongoing findings that informs the university’s feedback for continuous improvements. This is an exciting evolution and mutual collaboration that will demonstrate how current research on embedding a PCAS framework within service delivery, directly correlates to improved outcomes for people with disability. Learn more about Active Support and Practice Leadership at LaTrobe's Living with Disability Research Centre.
It is important to mention that the research focuses on the engagement of each person and their experiences with this type of support, as opposed to focussing on the individual themselves.
HELP's has decided that moving forward, all frontline employees delivering disability care have access to a Certificate IV course in Individual Support (Disability) through Help Enterprises registered training organisation (RTO) - the Help Training Institute. Certificate course materials delivered by our RTO have been extended to include the PCAS principals, to ensure that all support staff receives research-backed, consistent training and professional development opportunities.
Read the media news article about our formal partnership, or contact our Practice Manager PCAS to discuss further.
Expression of Interest
Register now for our next case study by completing the form below.