A total of 25 Social Services professionals from the Vegueria of Girona have been following a new edition of the training course “From Person-Centred Care to Self-directed Support” of the iSocial Foundation since 23rd September. The participants are social workers and social educators from the professional teams of the county councils of Alt Empordà, Garrotxa, Gironès and Baix Empordà.

The course consists of 8 workshops taught virtually, and is part of the training catalogue of the Catalan Association of Municipalities (ACM). During this year 2022, 212 professionals from 27 Basic Areas of the vegueries of Central Catalonia, Terres de l’Ebre, Alt Pirineu-Aran, Ponent and Penedès have already taken the course.

In addition, this September, 27 professionals from the Àuria Group, an important group of social economy entities from Igualada that support people with intellectual disabilities, special difficulties, risk of exclusion or vulnerability, have also taken the course. They design specialised training programmes, itineraries for incorporation into the labour market, day care services, therapeutic occupation, residential care, home care services, leisure services and volunteering.

The course “From Person-Centred Care to Self-Directed Support” aims to raise awareness of the European model of Self-directed Support, which seeks to guarantee and preserve an approach of supporting and accompanying people who turn to basic Social Services in their decision making, so that they have the possibility at all times to make effective choice and control over how the action or support plan is organised to achieve the results agreed with the professionals, based on their wishes and their rights.

In recent years, the approach of person-centred professional interventions, known as PCA, has been consolidated in Social Services. But today we know that it is not so much a question of putting the person at the centre and having professionals make decisions with their interests and wishes in mind, but rather of offering them the support they need to be able to make their own decisions. And this is what the European model of Self-directed Support seeks to guarantee.

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