Person and family-centered practices honor and support people’s abilities, strengths, and personal power. Each individual, family, and community have the ability to co-create a path that includes health, wellness, recovery, and resilience. Person and family-centered practices are rooted in cultural humility. Professional supporters engage in these practices to co-create unique paths with each person in the context of their current circumstances, preferred life choices, family/family of choice and/or other natural supporters. Professional supporters also engage in these practices in their organizations and communities in order to create and sustain positive changes toward these practices.
Culture, cultural identity, and worldview are multidimensional. They are influenced by aspects such as the following: (not a complete list)
Cultural humility acknowledges that culture influences all things and exerts a powerful force on behaviors and beliefs. It acknowledges that all people, communities, organizations, and systems are cultural carriers whether they are conscious of this or not.
Cultural humility acknowledges that the current human service systems unintentionally but powerfully perpetuates a historical and limited set of cultural norms and patterns of inequity. These norms and patterns include a perspective of people and families in these systems as being separate, broken, and needing to be fixed.
Cultural humility makes a commitment to lifelong learning about self and others. It includes a commitment to equalize power imbalances in our work, systems, and communities. It commits to co-creation of communities where all are included, valued, and represented in power.