The importance of supporting individuals to plan for their future wellbeing and fulfilment, including end-of-life care

It is important for support workers to help enable the people they support to use and develop their existing skills, to engage in activities they have always done, and be a part of their family and the wider community. This will reinforce the person’s:

• Sense of hope
• Confidence
• Self esteem
• Ability to show warmth and affection
• Experience and showing of pleasure and enjoyment

If a person isn’t supported to plan for the future wellbeing and fulfilment they can become depressed and lose motivation, particularly if they live with inappropriate support where their dependency, rather than strengths is the focus.

By reinforcing a person’s sense of hope etc. you can help an individual feel fulfilled and want to plan for their future wellbeing, including end of life care. To maximise a person’s opportunities they need to be supported to:

• communicate their wants and needs
• make contact with other people
• have control over their present and future and to continue to develop and flourish as a person
• have the time and space to address issues which may be concerning them in relation to their planning for their end of life and/or loss of mental capacity and personal control over decision-making.
• maintain their quality of life acknowledging them as developing and growing individuals throughout their lifespan

A person’s outcomes might not always be about what a person wishes to achieve themselves, but how they wish to be supported and how the care should be provided e.g. that they are supported in a more enabling way.

Where someone is terminally ill or has an advancing progressive condition such as dementia, it is important to enable the person to express their feelings about this, and to address any plans they may have for how they wish to be supported when they are no longer able to express their wishes, or to plan for end of life care.

Use to answer question 5.2c of the Care Certificate