My Condition, My Terms, My Life – LTCAS

Professional Resources

About self management

Self management puts people at the centre of services and in the driving seat.  It is a partnership of a wide range of agencies, unpaid carers and health professionals who view self management as dynamic and reflecting an ethos of empowerment.

A collaborative approach to supporting people with long term conditions is essential if people are to enjoy a better quality of life.  Self management involves moving away from traditional interactions where the care professional is the expert with responsibility for health and decision making, to individuals with long term conditions playing a more active role in defining their own health goals.  Professionals support the individual to make informed decisions and choices.

Better awareness of their long term condition helps people understand their symptoms and experiences and improves their long term health and wellbeing.

Professionals can:

• encourage self confidence and the capacity for self management
• support people to have more control of their conditions and their lives
• promote their efforts to enhance their health and wellbeing.

Self management means:

• a shared approach to setting goals and problem solving
• signposting people to the type of support and information they need
• having a more outcome-focused approach to planning and reviewing an individual’s situation
• taking account of people’s inherent ability for self-healing and recovery
• acknowledging that each of us is the expert in our own life circumstances.

The voluntary sector, people living with long term conditions and their unpaid carers have extensive experience in supporting people to self manage, particularly in providing peer support. Partnerships between health, social care and voluntary sectors can have a huge impact.

Self management increases the capacity, confidence, and ability of the individual and their unpaid carers to manage their condition(s).

Support for self management can be offered through:

• appropriate information and education
• self-diagnostic tools
• establishing a mutual partnership between professional and individual

Support for self management involves close collaboration between the person living with a long-term condition and professionals.  Individuals, families, friends, unpaid carers and service providers can share information, agree goals and create a personalised care plan to guide care at home as well as in the clinical setting.  It is not about professionals handing over responsibility to individuals.  It is about helping people to gain more control.

Empowering individuals who use services to take a shared role in the decisions made about managing their condition is central to supporting self management.  A cultural shift in favour of self management is needed – away from ‘doing to’ people towards ‘doing with’.

Health and Social care systems can support self management by:

• supporting people and their unpaid carers to have increased knowledge, skills and confidence to manage their condition
• increasing service providers’ capability to respond to the needs and preferences of the individual
• supporting a psychosocial and medical approach