Person-Centric Strategies
What is Person-Centric Strategies Series?
Person-Centric Strategies (PCS) is a comprehensive, strategic series of targeted professional development programs designed to prepare staff, teams, organizations, related service systems and those they serve to respond effectively to wholesale provincial changes to social assistance and employment services.
Known formerly as Client-Centric Strategies, the PCS Series has been retitled from 'client-centric' to 'person-centric.' This change captures the important fact that the PCS Series’ concepts, principles, practices, competencies and tools are applicable to working not only with clients, but also with co-workers, community service providers, tenants, families, program participants and any other individual or group engaging with professional human services staff.
Person-Centric Strategies is a Copyright (2020) of Labour Market Partners Inc. and Collaborative Strategies Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Let's Talk About Your Professional Development Needs
Contact OMSSA's Director of Education, Christie Herrington, to learn how we can develop and deliver a professional development program tailored to your team's needs.
Email Christie or call 647-385-9285 to get started.
Learn more about how this professional development program can be customized for different sectors:
Why PCS?
The many large-scale, foundational changes that are so affecting our sector are outlined in the provincial Social Assistance Renewal initiative, including Employment Services Transformation (EST). Changes directed specifically towards child care and social housing are further outlined in provincial Community Housing Renewal and Child Care Modernization documents.
Current and imminently forthcoming changes in our sector constitute a major and unprecedented culture shift in income redistribution programs that are funded, planned and delivered at the municipal level.
How Does PCS Address the Culture Shift That is Underway?
There are five programs in the PCS Series. These programs are designed to complement one another and contribute to the success of the whole service system. Each program is designed to address the needs of the key stakeholders in the local service system arising from the culture shift:
- PCS for Staff 1 (Understanding Behaviour, The 3-D MicroCoaching Model™, MicroCoaching Competencies)
- PCS for Staff 2: Advanced Applications
- PCS for Trainers and Champions*
- PCS for Service Users*
- PCS for Service System Integration*
*These programs are still being developed. More information will be available in the coming months. Please view our Program Description Guide to better understand these programs.
Who is a Service User?
We define service user as any person seeking or receiving service from the organization or individual staff, such as applicant, client, tenant, resident and family.
Program Objectives
- Provide a review of current research and thinking about human behaviour that includes the rapidly emerging and vital concept of intersectionality as well as the psychological and behavioural outcomes associated with socio-economic conditions of poverty, social exclusion, trauma and scarcity
- Establish the service user as the central focus of every interaction through the staff application of knowledge, skills and supporting behaviours (competencies) that promote service users' awareness and understanding
- Analyze this research to determine and apply strategic staff competencies and workplace tools to produce the best possible outcomes
- Supply workplace tools that bring person-centric theories and practices to life in the workplace
- Develop a common language to capture person-centric thinking and applications
- Normalize person-centric strategies across the sectors providing services to this group
- Support service integration at the local level by establishing evidence-based competency standards in service delivery across programs
- Enrich service users' outcomes using the Three-Dimensional MicroCoaching Model as a foundation for a person-centric service
- Ensure competency in 3-D MicroCoaching for staff in all roles, including administrative and other support roles where only brief staff-service user interactions occur ('thin-slice' situations)
- Identify and expand upon the competencies necessary for effective MicroCoaching
- Use these competencies to level power through increasing the engagement of service users in the coaching process
- Strengthen intra- and inter-organizational relationships for more effective service delivery and results
Program Roadmap
Organizations may choose to deliver some or all of the following modules. The duration of each module can be adapted to the needs of the learning group.
PCS for Staff 1
Module 1 - Understanding Behaviour: What Current Research Tells Us About Human Behaviour Under Stressful Circumstances
Duration: 6 hours
Learning Objectives:
- Examine current research and theories that reflect on service user and staff behaviours
- Explore the psychological and behavioural outcomes associated with socio-economic conditions of poverty, social exclusion, trauma and scarcity
- Understand intersectionality as a lens to analyze personal and systemic bias
Module 2: The 3-D MicroCoaching Model™
Getting Results through Brief Interventions
Duration: 3 hours
Learning Objectives:
- Understand the importance of MicroCoaching as a foundation for a person-centric service, including support roles and short-contact situations
- Increase use of a common coaching language and terminology
- Enrich coachee outcomes through the use of MicroCoaching
- Strengthen intra- and inter-organizational relationships for more effective service delivery
Module 3: MicroCoaching Competencies
Models for MicroCoaching Behaviour in the Workplace
Duration: 9 hours
Learning Objectives:
- Identify and expand upon the key knowledge, skills and supporting behaviours (competencies) necessary for effective MicroCoaching
- Enrich coachee outcomes through the application of these competencies
- Increase engagement of coachees in the coaching process
- Use these competencies to level power in the working relationship
- Apply the competency tools provided in this program to a case study in preparation for use in the workplace
PCS for Staff 2: Advanced Applications
An advanced applications follow-up program to examine post-training application of person-centric competencies.
Duration: 2 days (recommended minimum)
Delivery Method: Facilitator-led workshops
Curriculum Overview: Organizations where staff have completed the PCS for Staff program may also choose to engage in a follow-up module which applies the Knowledge-to-Action (KTA) model to advanced applications in the action cycle. This module engages staff and their teams/organizations in examining post-professional development application of competencies. The collaborative process helps ensure effective, inclusive, integrated and coherent team/organizational person-centric services. This advanced applications module also explores the impact of intersectionality on both service providers and users. An understanding of intersectionality enlarges our appreciation of the impacts of the social, political and economic forces that shape human experience. This module explores the PCS Intersectionality Model as a guide to applying PCS competencies in our work with service users, co-workers and community members.
Learning Objectives:
Explore a sector-specific model of Intersectionality to facilitate person-centric practices that acknowledge and accommodate service users' lived experience.
Facilitate the shift from knowledge to action through problem-identification and problem-solving.
Acquire knowledge of these problems at the team and organizational level.
Assess the barriers and facilitators to knowledge use in day-to-day work (e.g., implementation of the workplace tools in PCS).
Choose interventions to address the issues.
Monitor the effectiveness of these measures.
Evaluate the results.
Sustain the necessary changes for success.
PCS for Trainers and Champions
A deep-dive workshop into the underlying research and applications of PCS.
Duration: 5 days (recommended minimum)
Delivery Method: Facilitator-led workshops which also engages the learners in co-facilitation
Curriculum Overview: Conducted as a workshop for municipal, provincial, and community-based staff trainers and other person-centric champions who support knowledge translation and application of person-centric strategies in the workplace through ongoing professional development and coaching. The workshop provides a detailed, behind-the-scenes review of the PCS curriculum and its supporting tools and resources, including the curriculum syllabus and the PCS Learning Resource Guide.
Learning Objectives:
- Build internal organizational and service system capacity for ongoing staff and service users' personal/professional development in PCS by providing background, insight and resources for facilitating and-or supporting internal delivery of PCS for Staff and PCS for Service Users.
- Identify the differences between delivering training and facilitating professional development.
- Understand the importance of and process for conducting a facilitated dialogue as a primary knowledge transfer process in professional development.
- Develop personal and team facilitation learning plans.
- Identify necessary supports for effective program delivery and normalization.
- Create daily agendas for ensuring a collaborative, consensus-built decisionmaking process with the learning group.
- Assist learners to serve as Knowledge-to-Action (KTA) leaders in various roles: coaches, champions, change agents, culture shifters and normalizers, supporting the understanding and application of person-centric strategies in the workplace.
- Provide the opportunity to take an in-depth look at the curriculum and the supporting learning materials.
- Examine facilitation methods for curriculum delivery and workplace application of the person-centric approach.
- Establish a network and support system for delivering and supporting PCS.
- Meet individual learner’s objectives
PCS for Service Users
Preparing for personal, educational and career success.
Duration: 10 half- days6 (recommended minimum)
Delivery Method: Facilitator-led workshops
Curriculum Overview: Facilitator-led workshops are proposed to build service user competencies critical for preparing for, participating and succeeding in stability and employment support programs and, ultimately, employment. Currently under development, this curriculum builds on prior service users' initiatives created by our professional development team which include Movement to Learning, Movement to Improvement and Movement to Employment.
Learning Objective: To build competencies critical for helping service users to prepare for, participate and succeed in stability support and employability improvement programs and, ultimately, employment.
Topics (may include but are not limited to):
- Intersectionality (recognizing the lived experience of individuals according to their unique social and economic identities and circumstances)
- 3-D MicroCoaching Model (coaching upward)
- Stages of Change Model (planning for change)
- Four-Step Problem Solving (informed decision-making)
- Moving to Collaboration (optimizing the coaching experience)
- Person-Centric Negotiating (collaborative problem-solving)
- Consensus Building (building agreement with coaches)
- Four-Dimensional Model of Employability (preparing for employment success)
- Conference Board of Canada Employability Skills Model (preparing for employment success)
- Gap Analysis (plotting the service plan for individual success)
*Please note that service-user training days are generally abbreviated to maximize engagement and accommodate their needs. A typical service user training day would run from 9:30 AM to 3:00 PM with an hour for lunch. A typical half-day would run 9:30 AM to 11:45 AM with a 15-minute break.
PCS for Service System Integration
A locally-driven problem-solving table for partner collaboration.
This is a customized program that is designed in collaboration with the municipality/department/agency engaged. Each community’s circumstances and different, such that the final implementation plan is designed according to local needs, factors and circumstances.
Duration: 9 hours (recommended minimum)
Delivery Method:
- 3 hours for facilitator-led Initial Consultation and As It was Heard Report
- 6 hours for Convening the Partners
- Ongoing from there
Stages of Establishing the Local Systems Integration Table
Initial consultation
Duration: Up to 3 hours
Consultation led by OMSSA consultants with municipal and provincial representatives to identify facilitating factors and systemic barriers to achieving an effective, inclusive, integrated and coherent local person-centric delivery system that reflects the goals and objectives of Social Assistance Renewal and Employment Services Transformation.
What Was Heard Report
Duration: Included as part of the Initial Consultation
Problem Identification: A summary of issues identified in the initial consultation
Recommendations and draft Terms of Reference for establishing the Service System Integration table. Identification of prospective stakeholders and participants
Convening the Partners
Duration: 6 hours
- Develop a communications strategy for internal and external engagement.
- Establish the modality/location, time, agenda and duration for an initial gathering of the stakeholders.
- Craft an invitation to key stakeholders, including community service providers.
- Table the draft Terms of Reference for stakeholder input (e.g., co-chairs, problem-statement, goals and objectives, timelines, operational procedures, roles and responsibilities, draft charter).
- Establish the competency-based framework for Service System Integration table, including the person-centric tools for implementation.
- Explore the provincial vision for Social Assistance Renewal and Employment Services Transformation.
- Adapt the vision to the local context (e.g., service users' existing and needed resources, budgetary needs). •
- Establish local targets and monitoring and measurement requirements.
- Develop a work plan and benchmarks.
- Measure results and corresponding action plans.
Curriculum Overview: This program constitutes a locally-driven problem-solving table engaging the key Social Assistance Renewal and Employment Services Transformation delivery partners, including municipalities, ODSP management, EO delivery agencies, service user representatives, the Service System Managers, and provincial ministries such as the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services (MCCSS), the Ministry of Labour, Training and Skills Development (MLTSD), and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing (MMAH).
The purpose is to help ensure an effective, inclusive, integrated and coherent local person-centric delivery system.
The program is designed to operate through the use of PCS competencies, such as Communication Styles, Four-Step Problem-Solving, Moving to Collaboration, Conflict Management and Person-Centric Negotiating. An intersectionality lens is also applied to the process. The work of this collaborative body is determined through the application of the Action Cycle articulated in the KTA model
Learning Objectives
Following the KTA model, this involves creating and nurturing a partners' collaboration to:
- Support service delivery leaders in adapting to and effectively managing the culture shift.
- Engage key partners in building and sustaining an effective, inclusive, integrated and coherent local person-centric stability and employment support.
- Facilitate the shift from knowledge to action through problem-identification and problem-solving.
- Acquire knowledge of these problems in the local context.
- Assess the barriers to and factors that enable knowledge use (e.g., implementation of workplace tools in PCS).
- Choose interventions to address the issues.
- Monitor the effectiveness of these measures.
- Evaluate the results.
- Sustain the necessary changes for success.
- Examine system effectiveness in acknowledging and accounting for intersectionality in service delivery
Workplace Supports for PCS
There is an emphasis in PCS on applying in the workplace the theories, competencies, principles and practices found in the curriculum. Workplace implementation - the true measure of learning effectiveness - is supported through:
The PCS Learners Workbook
Each learner is provided with a workbook containing all of the learning material to support learners in their webinar participation. The workbook also serves as a post-learning event resource in the workplace.
The workbook also contains a detailed Learning Resource Guide, which is a bibliography of topically-relevant books, websites, videos and articles which were used to create the program and are organized according to the topics in the curriculum. The Guide may be of interest to learners who seek to expand their knowledge of the topics covered in the program. It also supports management in their role in normalizing person-centric practices and creating an ongoing learning culture in the workplace.
Learners are invited to share their own contributions, which allows the Guide to become a living document.
Pre- and Post-Learning Self-Assessment
Learners complete a self-assessment questionnaire before and after the program to record their self-assessed competencies in coaching and problem-solving, and track their progress and desire for further development in each of the topics covered in the curriculum.
Workplace Tools
Learners receive modernized job aids which provide a ’mind map‘ or guide for using each person-centric competency effectively. Each tool contains a summary of the competency and prompting questions that illustrate how the skill may be used in staff roles.
Skills Applications in the Workplace (SAW)
Skills Application in the Workplace is a document for learners to reflect on how they will use the competencies covered in the workshop within their individual workplace roles.
Program Authors and Facilitators
Marianne Seaton, President
Collaborative Strategies Inc.
John G. Howley, President
Labour Market Partners Inc.
John Howley and Marianne Seaton are the pre-eminent designers and deliverers of professional development curricula in Ontario Works and related social services programs and agencies throughout the province, and beyond. Marianne has been consulting in the social services sector as the principal of Collaborative Strategies Inc. since 2008 and John through his company, Labour Market Partners Inc., since 1997. Their work encompasses many Consolidated Municipal Service Managers and District Social Services Administration Boards, from the largest urban municipalities to the most rural and remote.
Following their careers as social assistance and employment program front-line workers and managers, each achieved subsequent success and recognition as a leader in program development and change. Marianne is the former Acting Executive Director and Director of Professional Development for the Ontario Municipal Social Services Association (OMSSA). John is the former Director of Employment and Training for the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto, Social Services Division (now the City of Toronto).
Their work in helping multi-barriered Ontario Works clients achieve success in the world of work includes the design and delivery of SAIL for Clients, a competency-based program that they have delivered in various areas of the province, often in association with community colleges, including Sault College, Confederation College and St. Clair College. John and Marianne also collaborate on designing and delivering employment programs for social assistance clients in a range of other programs, including Movement to Employment (employability profiling); Movement to Improvement (life skills development), and Movement to Learning (literacy and skills training preparation).