Phases of Person-Centered Work
Contents
What Are Person-Centered Approaches?
Person-centered approaches are ways of developing policies and designing programs that respect the expertise of people most impacted by them. Person-centered work envisions a fundamental shift in how organizations interact with the individuals they serve, moving away from top-down decision-making toward a model rooted in partnership. These approaches recognize and celebrate the inherent expertise of those with lived experience and ensure that their voices directly shape the programs and policies that affect their lives.
Crucially, this work is rooted in the core values of dignity, respect, accountability, sustainability, and adaptability. Dignity and respect ensure that every participant is treated as a valued partner and is considered an expert based on their experiences and knowledge, while accountability guarantees that the organization answers to the community for its actions. Sustainability is a reflection of how crucial relationship building is to the advancement and continued development of person-centered work. It is a commitment to ensuring that person-centered processes are embedded throughout the organization and remain prioritized. Adaptability allows the processes to evolve based on the unique, changing needs of the people involved.
How to Use This Resource
This resource was developed by the Person-Centered Community of Practice, a network of community and staff leaders from national organizations who are dedicated to advancing economic well-being. Established in 2025, the Community of Practice aims to grow person-centered approaches in the design of policies and programs in order to improve outcomes for communities.
While person-centered models take different forms across organizations, many share common processes for developing them. This resource outlines four phases of person-centered work, illuminating key features of each phase and presenting crucial questions for organizations to ask as they embark on their journeys. We have designed it to be used by a wide range of leaders, community organizations, and funders alike, as a tool for internal assessment, knowledge building, and strategic planning.
The Four Phases at a Glance
Phase 1: Internal Preparation
Making the commitment to develop person-centered approaches is an important decision that carries promise and responsibility, and it requires deep internal preparation to ensure an organization is ready to support meaningful engagement with community stakeholders.
An organizational needs assessment can be used to level-set internally and determine what perspectives are missing in the organization’s work, what capacity the organization has to support engaging with community leaders, and what the organization’s goals are for this engagement. Person-centered work requires strong organizational buy-in and alignment of internal values to ensure that the work is connected to the mission. Organizations can establish a solid foundation for person-centered work by assessing their organization’s commitment, goals, and staff readiness.
In addition to the internal assessment, an integral piece of internal preparation is connecting with partner and peer organizations to learn about best practices and receive necessary training (e.g. trauma-informed care).
Beyond internal culture and processes, preparation involves fundraising and identifying the lived expertise that is most relevant to your organizations’ work and priorities (e.g., Medicaid enrollees, young adults with experience in foster care, people who have applied for public benefits). It is important for organizations without existing relationships to people with lived experience to reach out to partner organizations and peers to help bridge connections based on trust and sustained engagement.
Key Questions
- Do we have the necessary funding, organizational buy-in, and staff capacity to support this work long-term, rather than as a one-off project?
- How would lived experience fit into our organization’s theory of change?
- How does our organization currently define “expertise”?
- What internal biases, structural barriers, or limitations of work might prevent our organization from achieving an embedded person-centered approach?
Phase 2: Design and Development
Designing and developing parameters for an engagement should be done together with staff, community leaders, and peer organizations. During this stage, the organization’s staff determines the boundaries of the work and rigorous standards for engagement, such as the appropriate amount, frequency, and format of compensation provided to community members for their time and expertise. In this phase, staff should identify an internal lead for the work and establish clear roles and responsibilities to manage the engagement process effectively. This clarity prevents confusion and ensures that when the project moves into the recruitment phase, the organization can offer a professional, well-structured environment that respects the time and contributions of all people involved.
Key Questions
- How can our organization co-create this process so that people with lived experience have input on their roles, responsibilities, and compensation from day one?
- Are our organization’s compensation and meeting structures transparent, accessible, and fair? Or do they create additional bureaucratic hurdles for participants?
Phase 3: Recruitment and Onboarding
Recruitment requires bridge-building between the organization and the community through outreach and simplified communications strategies designed to reach a broad audience. By engaging trusted community-based organizations and meeting with local leaders, the organization can begin to foster authentic connections. This phase emphasizes building relationships and trust outside of structured meetings, allowing for a more organic development of rapport.
To ensure a smooth transition into active participation that accommodates the reality of busy life schedules (e.g., outside of standard 9-5 office schedules), the organization must prioritize transparency and a willingness to adapt how meetings with community leaders will be structured and facilitated. This includes setting clear expectations for the frequency and method of communication as well as what information about them will be shared publicly. Providing quick and consistent responses to group members is vital for maintaining momentum and trust. Most importantly, organizations should recognize that it takes time to build trusting relationships and create a welcoming environment where these leaders feel empowered to shape the decision-making framework and feedback methods from the very beginning.
Key Questions
- What outreach strategies will ensure we are reaching people who are traditionally excluded from organizational strategy and who reflect the diversity of the community our organization serves?
- How can we demonstrate transparency regarding how participant data and meeting outcomes will be used?
Phase 4: Action
Person-centered work is always ongoing but at this stage, the organization begins incorporating community insights into its official actions. This phase involves communicating how insights will be used before being made public, shaping and co-creating how community expertise is incorporated into decision-making and design, and clearly translating co-created findings so that they are fully accessible to all parties. To ensure “meaningful input,” staff should guide discussions with open-ended questions that encourage visionary thinking, utilize varied and creative approaches to gathering feedback, and invite discussion on topics beyond the immediate agenda to honor the interconnectedness of all systems that shape peoples’ lives.
During this phase, meeting etiquette and environment are critical to fostering a comfortable space for participants. Organizations must consider potential power structures and prepare strategies to remove these dynamics in advance of engaging people with lived experience, such as creating confidential spaces, limiting staff presence in meetings, and setting shared meeting norms. Practical support is also essential, including providing accessibility support, communicating without complex jargon, and providing agendas ahead of time to allow proper time for reflection and preparation. Ensuring all parties enter meetings with shared understandings of their scope and goal—as well as how information gathered in those meetings will be used—is a necessary precondition for deeper conversations and co-creation of policies and programs.
Key Questions
- Are we incorporating community insights into actual projects, programs, policy changes, or priorities—or is their input only being used to check a “feedback” box?
- How are we actively removing power dynamics in the room to ensure every voice carries equal weight?
Ongoing Strategies to Adapt
Person-centered work is an ongoing commitment, which requires that organizations ensure their approaches and processes evolve to meet the unique, changing needs of the people involved. Organizations can continuously revisit participants’ capacity and interests, collect and respond to feedback, and change internal guidelines as needed. By tracking the work, outcomes, and success according to both community and staff member definitions, the organization can take accountability and build upon their shared knowledge and best practices. Measuring success allows organizations to chart the path for person-centered practices to be scaled internally to other teams or externally to partner organizations.
True growth involves increasing the decision-making power and ownership of people with lived experience. Organizations may consider offering less time-intensive opportunities to participate in person-centered work, inviting participants to lead or take greater ownership in meetings—internal and external—or sharing tangible policy impacts that have been directly shaped by community expertise. To ensure the work remains healthy and sustainable for the long term, organizations should routinely invest in the leadership and capacity of the community leaders through customized professional development and providing resources to support mental health and emotional wellness.
Key Questions
- Does our definition and measurement of “success” include perspectives of both staff and communities?
- What mechanisms are in place to increase shared ownership and decision-making power?
- Are we responsive to evolving member needs?
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