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Approximately 160 attended the day and a half conference, where Michael Smull discussed how the way services are organized and provided affects the risks and behavior of those who use the services. Most providers have been striving for person centered services for several years. In order to truly have an acceptable impact, it is important to develop person centered systems. Person centered services support people one at a time to develop meaningful lives and self directed supports. Person centered systems create those outcomes for every person using the service. Developing that sort of system however requires making significant changes to almost everything we think and do in the current structures. The necessity of these changes becomes more urgent when we realize that about 70% of the "behaviors" that we find to be challenging are created by the environments people in which people spend their time, basically the system causes about 70% of the challenges we address. Michael provided many useful tools to assist in designing person centered services around a person, even when the challenges are in the other 30%, as well as some guidance in how to approach person centered systems.
Michael used real life stories with the permission of the people at the center, and a wry sense of humor to share his message with those in attendance. Small table discussions and completing one of the tools on ourselves helped crystallize the information.
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