Imagine a world where you…
- are seen within the of setting of your whole life, including your relationships, interests, focussing on what matters to you and your healthcare.
- are a valued active partner in conversations and decisions about your health and wellbeing.
- are recognised as the expert in your own life, and conversations build on your knowledge, skills and confidence.
- are supported to find solutions, make plans and break down your health and care goals into manageable steps that work for you.
- you can have peer support from people with a similar condition or health experience and support each other.
- you have a choice in the support you need to manage your health condition, such as, one-to-one basis, in pairs or in small groups.
What is supported self-management?
‘Supported self-management’ is the term the NHS use to to mean the ways that healthcare services encourage, support and empower you to manage your long term physical and mental health conditions. Supporting you to look after yourself improves your health and wellbeing outcomes.
You will have be supported to have choice and control over the way your care is planned and delivered. It means:
- Proactively identifying people’s knowledge, skills and confidence in managing their own health and care (known by the NHS as ‘patient activation’).
- Healthcare professionals tailor their approaches to working with people, based on their individual strengths, needs and preferences, as well as taking account of any inequalities and accessibility barriers, working in a personalised way based on what matters to the individual.
- Ensuring approaches are put in place to help build their knowledge, skills and confidence.
These approaches include:
Health coaching – helping people gain and use the knowledge, skills and confidence to become active participants in their care so that they can reach their self-identified health and wellbeing goals.
Self-management education – any form of formal education or training for people with long-term conditions focused on helping them to develop the knowledge, skills and confidence they need to manage their own health care effectively.
Peer support – a range of approaches through which people with similar long-term conditions or health experiences support each other to better understand the conditions and aid recovery or self-management. Peer support may be formal or informal: it can be delivered by trained peer support staff and volunteers, or through more informal, ad hoc support among peers with lived experience.
