The purpose of this blog is to record and share thinking, actions and learning around the everyday work of overcoming the forces of exclusion and devaluation that affect so many human beings.
It seems like a daunting task, but this work is occuring in the everyday lives of every excluded human being, and among the people whose lives they touch, because the very act of existing presents a continuing challenge to structures that exclude and ignore. Around the world, over the last few decades, a movement has been growing that is consciously aiming to support this work by acting for change in the structures and attitudes that lead to the devaluation and segregation of human beings.
This movement is bound together by a shared commitment to people's rights as human beings, to inclusion, to valuing people, to appreciating what people have to offer and to learning the support that people need to express these gifts, so that they can achieve their full potential, and take their rightful place in the community as a contributing citizen and a valued friend. We sum up these ideas and values with the term 'person-centredness'.
Achieving the change implied by these values requires different kinds of work.
We will need to change the way human services work. Current efforts at 'personalisation' are the beginnings of redesigning the way services are delivered so that they meet people's needs by putting the person much more in control of their own support, but if these changes are confined simply to how services are paid for, they will not deliver the much more fundamental change that is needed, we also need to change how services think, and challenge limited expectations and underestimation of the potential lives and contribution of people who use such supports, as well as limited expectations and underestimation of the potential that exists within communities to welcome and benefit from the presence and participation of previously segregated people.
One of the key aspects of this work lies in changing the ways we meet and think together. This is why the blog is called 'Human Thinking Together'. We have learned that the deepest changes happen when people who provide and commission services, and people who use those services and their allies climb outside the socially demarcated roles that trammel their thinking, and meet together at a human level, to think, act and learn together. We call the means that help people meet together and think in this way person-centred thinking skills and tools.
Over the next few months and years, I'll be using this blog to share my own thoughts on the work of this movement, along with news and ideas, particularly on what's happening in my own area, Central Lancashire, as part of a wider movement across the UK and across the world. The emphasis will be on the word 'together'. Your feedback as a reader will be really valued, so please use the 'comments' button liberally, to share your responses to blogposts, suggestions for links and improvements, ideas for further postings. Together we can build a good blog, and together we can build great lives in a welcoming community.
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