10 minutes
The domains people use Learn the areas people themselves use to describe a good life, and why no two people weight them alike.
What you’ll be able to do Name the commonly used quality-of-life domains and explain, with an example, why their weighting must come from the person. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: What should happen next? Document a next step for The domains people use: For one person you support, guess which two domains they weight highest, then ask them and see if you were right. A stable list, an individual weighting Ask people what makes their life good and the answers group into a small number of areas that recur across cultures, ages and disabilities. Relationships. A home that feels like yours. Something to do that matters. Health. Being safe. Having choices. Being part of something beyond your household. Being treated with respect. The list is not controversial.
What varies enormously is the weighting. For one person, work is the center and everything else is arranged around it. For another, it is a relationship, or a faith community, or the particular apartment they have lived in for twenty years. A service that pursues all the domains equally, or pursues the ones it happens to be good at delivering, will spend a great deal of effort in areas the person does not weight and little in the one they do.
The domains, and a question for each Relationships Who do you see when you want to, and who would you call at two in the morning? People with disabilities often have networks made up largely of paid staff and family, and the question surfaces it.
Home Did you choose where you live and who you live with, and does it feel like yours? A setting can be in the community and still not be a home.
Work and purpose Is there something you do that matters to you and that other people count on? Paid work is one answer and not the only one.
Health Do you feel well, and do you have a say in your care? Health is a domain the person weights, not a set of conditions the service manages.
Safety Do you feel safe where you live and with the people around you? Asked directly, and away from anyone the answer might be about.
Choice What did you decide this week, and what was decided for you? A person can be in a good setting with almost no say in their day.
Community Are you part of anything beyond your home and your services? Membership, not presence.
Respect Are you treated as an adult, spoken to rather than about, and asked before things are done to you?
The list of domains is shared. The weighting is the person's, and a plan that does not know the weighting is a plan for someone in general.
Let the person weight the list What you can change You control whether the domains are used as a conversation or as a form. Used as a form, every domain gets a goal. Used as a conversation, the person tells you which one matters.
What to watch for Do not build a plan that is balanced across domains. A balanced plan is usually a plan nobody weighted.
Your next step In your next planning conversation, ask which one area, if it changed, would change everything else.
Carry this forward People describe a good life in recognizable areas: relationships, home, work and purpose, health, safety, choice, community, and respect. The list is stable; the weighting is not.
A service that pursues the domains it is good at, rather than the ones the person weights highest, can be busy and successful and still miss.
The domains are a prompt for a conversation, not a form to fill in.
An accordion on the domains, a scenario decision and a knowledge check.
For one person you support, guess which two domains they weight highest, then ask them and see if you were right.
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Previous lesson Next lesson Carry this into practice The difference between a service delivered and a life changed, how to ask about outcomes in the person's terms, and what a quality review looks like when it starts from the person rather than the file.
Return to the experience: What did you notice or try, whose perspective informed it, and what would you keep or adjust?
Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.
