What Are Intentional Care Performance Standards?
In our day-to-day work we encounter many difficult and ambiguous situations. Examples include:
- If a client graduates from college and invites you to a celebration dinner at his/her apartment, what should you do?
- If a client won't shower is it best to let him/her suffer the natural consequences of their choice?
- If a client asks if you have ever received mental health services, what should you say?
- If a client offers you a gift for Christmas, is it OK to take it?
- If you discover that a client is a member of the same health club you belong to, what should you do?
- If a client is refusing to take out the garbage in his/her apartment, what should you do?
- When you go to the local coffee shop on your day off, the owner complains to you about a client in your program and tells you that unless you do something, the client will be banned from entering the shop. What do you say to the shop owner?
- A client chooses to keep drinking caffeine even though it makes him/her anxious and exacerbates symptoms. What do you do?
Intentional Care Performance Standards offer staff and supervisors performance based guidelines for making decisions in these and other difficult/ambiguous situations. Intentional Care Performance Standards have been developed for the following domains:
- Role of the Direct Service Worker
- Client Choice
- Professional Boundaries
- Confidentiality
- Cleaning: Group Homes
- Cleaning: Supported Housing
- Community Integration
- Communicating Respectfully About the People We Work With (in progress)
Intentional Care Performance Standards are not a cookbook in the sense that staff can look up every conceivable situation and find an answer. Rather Intentional Care Performance Standards give examples of typical situations that serve to guide decision-making. In this way the Standards help bring uniformity to how staff handle issues. In addition, Intentional Care Performance Standards guide staff in working in ways that are empowering and that support clients in their recovery process.
Intentional Care Performance Standards also represent the expectations that supervisors have for how employees do their work. They include role-plays that allow staff to practice using the Standards. Competency based evaluations are included for each Performance Standard and allow supervisors to assess if staff have intellectually mastered the content of the Standards. Finally, annual employee performance based evaluation tools are included to help supervisors assess how well staff implement the Standards in their everyday work.
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What are the I.C. Standards
